ALFRED THE GREAT 



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XibratB of tbe (Breat TOlorl& 



Alfred The Great 



BY 

A. VAN DOREN HONEYMAN 

Author of '* Bright Days in Merrie England, 
'•Bright Days in Sunny Lands," etc. 




f>onesman d Compans 
1905 



LIBRARY oT CONGRESS 
Two Cooies Rscetved 

DEC 7 1905 

^ Copyriftit entry 



CLASS CX XXc. No, 



j^e. 



THE CHAPTERS 

I. The England Before Alfred 

II. Alfred in His Youth 

III. Alfred Upon THE Throne 

IV. Something About the Saxons 

V. Alfred's Death and Characteristics. 

VI. Alfred as an Author 

VII. Comments by Historians 

Notes on the Text 

Best Works in English on Alfred.... 

Chronological Table 

Index 



Copyright, 1905, by 
HoNEYMAN & Company 

Published Nov. 10, 1905 



Some lights there be within the Heavenly Spheres 
Yet unrevealed, the interspace so vast ; 
So throuR-h the distance of a thousand years 
Alfred's full radiance shines on us at last." 

—Alfred Austin. 



ALFRED THE GREAT 

(849-901) 

CHAPTER I 

The England Before Alfred 

Preliminary Word. — Great men, in the high 
sense of that term, do not become such by acci- 
dent. They have that within them which impels 
them, constrains them, to great deeds. Their souls 
reach up and out for conquests. They find it no 
insuperable task to rise above the commonplace in 
endeavor, and to soar where others creep. Wheth- 
er by superior genius or noble resolve such ac- 
quire genuine distinction by sheer force of charac- 
ter — never by chance. Let him believe in chance 
greatness who may; the verdict of a thinking 
world is that cause produces effect, and that the 
doers of the ages are those to whom Faith and 
Duty are the bugle-calls to achievement. 

(5) 



6 ALFRED THE GREAT 

Certainly great men have been made such ii 
part by environments and by friendships. But th 
truly lofty soul lives quite apart, and will suffe. 
neither environments nor friendships to control it, 
onward progress. It is headed toward eterna 
destinies. It catches the light-gleams, it feels th 
inward thrill, it pulsates to the matchless hai 
monies, of the century in which it lives. To i 
there can be no such word as failure. There ma^ 
be delays and set-backs, but only death can put it 
seal on its earthly progress. 

The life of Alfred the Great, who may b 
equally well described as Alfred the Good, is 
shining example of what a splendidly brave ano 
good man, of more than usual genius, born in th 
purple but raised under most adverse circumt 
stances, may accomplish by plodding industn 
and fair talents joined to noble ideals. Nothing 
favored him in his earlier years except the royal 
ty of his birth ; nothing better became him in hi 
later days than the modesty of his life and hi 
scrupulous devotion to God and country. Wha 
a contrast to the usual manner of successful occu 
pants of worldly thrones! Whether in distress o 
in success, in battle or in peace, in disguise or ii 
royal apparel, in the hovel or on the throne, Al 
fred was always master of himself, always seren^ 
of spirit, always unselfish in behalf of the right 
of his brother-men, always an example of what ; 
pure-minded patriot and chosen leader should b' 
to win the distinction of "Father of his Country.' 
Every schoolboy has heard of him; every reade 
of history in every land and language knows th( 



ALFRED THE GREAT 7 

story of his reign and time. The lessons from 
that stor)^ like the affectionate regard of the 
English-speaking race for Alfred himself, will 
never die. Rich and poor; old and young; schol- 
ars, statesmen, law-givers, teachers ; men of action 
and men of thought, and men who are given 
neither to action nor thought, know that Eng- 
land might not have been, or, had she come to be, 
that she would have been robbed of an immense 
Kohinoor from her diadem of greatness, had not 
Alfred possessed the remarkable self-poise, the 
clear head, the educated hand, the religious heart, 
in a word the notably grand moral character, that 
made him man as well as king. 

Considering the age in which he lived; the 
density of the ignorance of law, literature and 
true morality among those whom he endeavored 
to raise to a higher level ; the divisions among 
his countrymen as to language, customs, religion, 
and, still more, national ideals; the almost hope- 
lessness of ever welding the ealdormen' of Wessex 
and the ealdormen of Mercia into a homogeneous 
nation; the bravery and numbers of his foes, the 
weakness of his own forces, and the fact that he 
had not the semblance of a navy with which to 
meet the pirates of the sea; and, when to these 
facts are added the want of a national literature, 
of schoolhouses and of teachers of youth, the ab- 
sence of past national histor^^ the deplorable mor- 
als of the masses, and the general poverty of his 
people: viewing all this it is amazing that Alfred's 
little kingdom survived, much less grew into 
greatness. All through that long onrush of Teu- 



8 ALFRED THE GREAT 

tonic hordes from the Continent of Europe, he 
not only held them in check, but eventually 
welded them into Englishmen ! 

"Why a great man," to quote M. Guizot, 
"comes at a particular epoch, and what force ot 
his own he puts into the development of the world 
no one can say. This is the secret of Providence." 
It must always remain a mystery how Alfred of 
England and Washington of America came to be 
just when and what they were, but God knows, 
and that must suffice. 

Events During the Roman Occupation. — The 
known history of England begins with the inva- 
sion of that, then far-away, island-country, by Ju- 
lius Caesar. Before his time all accounts of it are 
legendary and mystifying. It is doubtful if Cae- 
sar would ever have heard any real facts about! 
that land, much less have gone there to conquer 
it, had it not been for an unusual circumstance., 
He was busy with his conquest of Gaul, wheni 
he found that the Veneti, who lived in Brittany, in 
the west of present France, were great sailors. 
To overcome their navy, he built a fleet on the 
river Loire, and, when the Veneti heard of this 
they sent across the channel, to what is now 
Southern England, for succor. The Celts were 
there and they also had strong boats. So the two 
neighboring countries combined to defeat the 
fleet of Caesar. It seems probable that Albion, as 
Cssar called it, and Brittany, were both inhab- 
ited by much the- same class of people, having 
similar language and religion. At all events, 
Caesar seems not to have distinguished the 



ALFRED THE GREAT 9 

one from the other in his descriptions of them, 
except as to immaterial details. He says that 
both peoples were Druids, although, as we under- 
stand it to-day, the real Druids were an older 
stock, inhabiting Gaul and also Albion and Iverne 
(England and Ireland), and in Caesar's day go- 
ing into decline.^ 

The Celts of Albion were brave and free ; they 
practiced many of the arts; they mined ore and 
smelted tin; they had swords, shields and chariots; 
and they had religious priests and certain good 
laws that were respected. They were not savages, 
although this view is contrary to the one formerly 
accepted. Perhaps Caesar believed them savages 
because they disfigured themselves as such ; he says 
they " painted themselves with a dye."^ 

The result of the first navy conflict was that 
Caesar conquered the Veneti, and then, in ven- 
geance, as well as to satisfy his curiosity and am- 
bition, he took his fleet over to Albion, to make 
a punitive tour of that island. The Celts never 
dreamed of such a result to follow their fraternal 
assistance to the Veneti; but the invasion came, 
nevertheless. In the year 55 B. C, Caesar sailed 
from the chalk cliffs of France — from some port 
between the present cities of Calais and Boulogne 
— and made a landing on the English coast be- 
tween Walmer and Sandwich. He had ten thou- 
sand Roman soldiers. The beach was crowded 
with armed men, who had horses and chariots, but 
Roman discipline was, of necessity, triumphant. 
Who could stand up in that day and defeat Cae- 
sar! 



lo ALFRED THE GREAT 

It is an Interesting story of how Caesar went to 
Canterbury, crossed the Thames, penetrated to 
St. Albans, and then returned to Gaul. He did 
not subdue the country, but he made his name and 
that of the Roman legions known and feared 
wherever they went. 

Almost a hundred years later the Romans, in 
the time of Claudius, again reached Albion, and 
this time they became its masters. Vespasian was 
the general who accomplished the subjugation (A. 
D. 45-50) of the southern half of the country, in- 
cluding Wales. Agricola, twenty-nine years later 
(A. D. 79) completed the conquest, in the days 
of Nero. Then the Roman eagle had sway as 
far north as the Forth and the Clyde in Scotland. 
For three hundred and thirty-nine years the Ro- 
mans were complete rulers in Britain, as it now 
came to be called, and then left it forever, (In 

418). 

It was a long time in which to make a lasting 
Impression, but, singularly enough, they left it 
much as they found It, with a people at once ready 
to resume their Independence; a people who had 
adhered to their language and customs through 
all those centuries; a people divided as before into 
tribes, and in about the same condition of semi- 
civilization as when Julius Caesar first gazed at 
them from the decks of a ship ofE the Sandwich 
beach. During that Roman period Christianity 
had taken root In Rome and in all her colonies and 
Britain was not a stranger to it. But, when the 
Roman legions left, the island relapsed into pa- 
ganism, and until the coming of the missionaries 



ALFRED THE GREAT ii 

of Pope Gregory (597), there was a space of one 
hundred and eighty years when it was just as 
much of a heathen land as it had been in the 
time of the Druids. 

Britain's Early Name. — It is interesting to 
know what terms were used in speaking of the 
land of the Celts in the earliest days, because the 
modern name England was unknown until about 
a hundred years before the time of Alfred. By all 
earliest classical writers who allude to them Eng- 
land and Scotland were called Albion, and Ire- 
land was known as Hibernia or lerne, (Iverne). 
Aristotle (B. C. 384-322) distinctly calls them 
Albion and lerne. Cssar speaks of the country 
as Albion, although he gives to the people inhabit- 
ing it the name of Britanni (as Pliny does after 
him). Occasionally he refers to the country as 
Britannia. Cicero (B. C. io6-'43), whose broth- 
er accompanied Caesar on his journey to Albion, 
more freely used the term Britannia. It came later 
to be the Roman name. Britannia had also 
been used, as we now know by the earlier Greeks.^ 
Herodotus (B. C. 484-424) alludes to it. Ptol- 
emy ( Second Century A. D. ) was the first to call 
England and Scotland, Great Britain, and Ire- 
land, Little Britain. He says there were fifty- 
two different tribes there and he enumerates them. 

Who Were the Celts ? — Who were these early 
people? The designation of them has always been 
Celts, although subdivided Into Scots (in Ire- 
land), Picts (In Scotland), and Celts (In Bri- 
tain proper). The Celts were not indigenous to 
Great Britain. They were a people who had 



12 ALFRED THE GREAT 

sprung up upon the Continent of Europe, and 
were a mixture of the Eastern and of the Teu- 
tonic races. Their real home before going to 
Britain was in Gaul, so that Caesar was not far 
from right when he set down the inhabitants of 
both sides of the Channel as one people. The 
Celts got to England, we know not how, and 
they probably found an earlier race there, which, 
whether Druids or not, was disappearing, if, in- 
deed, it had not then vanished. Centuries may 
have elapsed while the Celts were overspreading 
the two islands, and, when the Romans came, and 
later, the Angles and Saxons, they still held on 
to language and customs with strange tenacity. 
The last expiring ray of the original Celtic as 
a spoken language, known finally as the Cornish 
tongue, was in Cornwall a little more than a 
century and a half ago.s 

So the Britons — as the term is usually written 
by the historians — of the early centuries before 
and after Christ, were Celts, from the continent 
of Europe, and were in previous ages of the same 
blood as those who, in various countries, both in 
Asia and Europe, had become great peoples, led 
by crafty and daring leaders. They were not 
Huns, nor Tartars; not barbarians, nor savages; 
they were men groping after light, strong of heart 
and brave of hand, endeavoring to work out prob- 
lems of civilization in their own way. They did 
not accomplish it alone, nor did the Romans 
greatly assist them. When their blood intermin- 
gled anew with their cousins of the farther north 
across the sea — the Angles and the Saxons, and 



ALFRED THE GREAT 13 

then, finally, the Normans — they made one of the 
grandest and noblest nations the world has ever 
seen. 

England After the Roman Era. — From the 
time the Romans went away, Britain was not left 
alone a single century in which to work out in 
peace her own destiny. The Celts had scarcely 
time to consider how they might best cement 
themselves into a nation from a patchwork of 
various factions and municipal divisions, before 
the Picts of Scotland and the Scots of Ireland, 
who had generally maintained their independence 
during the Roman rule, pounced down upon 
them. These two nations were also Celtic, it is 
supposed, but, as they had not been Christianized 
even outwardly through their Roman neighbors, 
they had continued in a frame of mind to plun- 
der. The Britain-Celts, on the contrary, had 
been taught at least some of the peaceful doc- 
trines of the Cross, and, perhaps, would not have 
begun any warfare on Picts or Scots. 

In their dilemma, the Celts, whom from this 
time on we shall designate as Britons, sent to Ger- 
many for assistance. They implored its abso- 
lutely heathen people to come and aid them. 
Whether the invitation went first to the Saxons 
or to the Angles, they both arrived at nearly the 
same time, ostensibly to assist the Britons in their 
defense, but, practically, to stay as possessors ot 
the land. 

The Angles w^ere from the border-land between 
present Germany and Denmark; the Lowlands, 
near the mouths of the Elbe and the Weser. On 



14 ALFRED THE GREAT 

their arrival, as soon as the Picts and Scots were 
subdued, they settled in Norfolk, Suffolk and 
Cambria. The Saxons came from what is known 
as the Duchy of Holstein, and settled in Sussex. 
There were also the Jutes, who may, in fact, have 
been the first arrivals. They came from north of 
the Angles, from what is present Denmark, (their 
country is still known as Jutland), and occupied 
Kent and the Isle of Wight. The Jutes did not 
come in sufficient numbers to make them formida- 
ble rivals to the Britons, but the Angles and Sax- 
ons came over by thousands. 

There was such a close resemblance between 
the Angles and the Saxons that the Celts never 
distinguished between them, but called them alike 
Saxons. The Angles, however, took up most of 
the territory; so much, indeed, in the middle, 
eastern and northeastern England (say more than 
one-third of all Britain, excluding Wales), that 
they eventually gave their name to the country — 
Angle-land, which was corrupted into England. 
The Saxons settled chiefly in southern England, 
excepting, however, Kent, where the Jutes had a 
foothold.^ 

The interesting historical fact, therefore, is, 
that these foreign races came to England, not for 
purposes of conquest but by invitation, and came 
to assist the Britons in subduing the Picts and 
Scots; that they remained after accomplishing 
that purpose, and fought against the Britons them- 
selves; and that eventually all of them together 
formed the nation of England as it was in the 



ALFRED THE GREAT 15 

days of Alfred, and, with the addition of Nor- 
man blood, as it is to-day. 

The Britons learned to hate these foreigners, 
but could not dislodge them, and, side by side, 
amid interminable controversies, fights and blood- 
shed, they lived for four hundred years, or until 
Alfred the Great began the work of merging them 
into one final and great kingdom, which, while 
not finished in his day, was accomplished but a 
short time later. 

Alfred's Ancestors. — Alfred the Great was not 
a Briton of Celtic stock but a Saxon. He came 
from the blood of Fifth Century invaders. It 
seems almost a pity that he could not have been 
a real Celt, a Briton pure and simple, and thus 
have proved to the w^orld that out of the more 
original native character a man could spring up 
to become a full-fledged leader of men, so burn- 
ing with intense heroism and patriotic zeal as to 
hurl to right and left all invaders upon his coun- 
try's soil. But such was not to be. In fact, we 
can now see that it were better not to have been 
so; because Alfred as a Celt would have been a 
pagan ; as a Saxon, succeeding a line of ancestry 
consecrated by the piety of Augustine and his 
followers to Christianity, he ascended the throne 
with a full knowledge of his responsibility^ to Al- 
mighty God, the source of all real individual 
strength and all true national hope. 

Cerdic and Cynric, two ealdormen of Saxon 
blood, came into the country with a body of fel- 
low-Saxons in 495. They landed upon the south 
coast and founded a settlement in present Hamp- 



i6 ALFRED THE GREAT 

shire. This settlement grew into Westsexe (the 
west place of the Saxons), which, later, was soft- 
ened into Wessex. Wessex, in a quarter of a cen- 
tury, was strong enough to form a kingdom, and 
Cerdic became king (about 520), his son, Cynric, 
succeeding him (534). They were the ancestors 
of Alfred. 

These were not the only Saxons who put their 
feet on English soil; there were others in Sussex 
and elsewhere, who came earlier and also later ;'^ 
but with these we have most to do in the history 
of Alfred, because he was of them, and he raised 
the Wessex kingdom to the height of the Eng- 
lish throne. 

Chief Dates of Four Centuries. — We need not 
here recite in detail the history of the next four 
hundred years, from the time of the arrival of 
Cerdic and Cynric to Alfred's day. In this con- 
nection it is to be noted that English historians are 
far from agreed on many of the dates, so that 
while those below are approximately correct, not 
all of them are certainly so. 

500-537. King Arthur is supposed to have 
been king of the Britons, ruling in the region of 
Cornwall ; if so, he was the last of the great Cel- 
tic chiefs. He is the one about whom so much 
legend and romance gathered in after-centuries. 
He was, doubtless, a real man, but the legends of 
him may be myths. The Saxons fought him and 
were beaten ; he was subsequentlv slain in the 
battle of Camlan, in Cornwall, somewhere about 
530-537, the exact date being unknown. He was 



ALFRED THE GREAT 17 

buried at Glastonbury, where his remains were 
found in the time of Henry H. (ii33-'89). 

520-534. Cerdic was king of the Saxons. 

534-560. Cynric, his son, was king, his domin- 
ions extending as far north as Bedford. As he had 
a clear title to the Wessex throne, and as the roy- 
al descent from him was for a long period of time 
unbroken, he furnishes the true ''head" of the 
royal line of the English sovereigns. 

560-616. Ethelbert, of Kent, was king, and 
Wessex was for a time only a subordinate part of 
the kingdom. In 568 Ethelbert was defeated in 
an engagement with the Wessex men, who took 
Sussex from him, but he continued to rule in 
Kent. In 570 the West Saxons got possession of 
Oxfordshire and Berkshire, so that they began 
to grow again into importance. In the time of 
Ethelbert, Augustine and his monks came (597), 
sent by Pope Gregory I. (542-604) of Rome, and 
Ethelbert was converted. Soon after most of the 
Saxons professed the new religion. He promul- 
gated a code of laws that lasted to a greater or 
less degree to Alfred's time and afterward. In 
601 Pope Gregory sent Paulinus as missionary to 
England, under whose preaching Edwin, king of 
the Northumbrians, was baptised. It was during 
Ethelbert's lifetime that the Angles and other 
Teutonic races became actual settlers everywhere 
from the river Severn to the German ocean, and 
from the English Channel to the Frith of Forth. 
Only Wales, which extended northerly to Ches- 
ter, and southerly to and including Cornwall and 



i8 ALFRED THE GREAT 

Devonshire, remained in the hands of the original 
Britons. 

687. At this date the Christian religion was 
firmly established everywhere in what later be- 
came England. The kings had been converted, 
one by one, from paganism, and the people fol- 
lowed their lords; monasteries sprang up and 
flourished. 

694. The West Saxons obtained possession of 
Kent, and continued thereafter as leading rulers 
in Britain. 

740. King Ethelbald, of Mercia, styled him- 
self "King of England." 

787. The Danes and Northmen first landed on 
the eastern and southern coast for purposes of 
plunder, not of conquest. 

794. The Danes defeated the Saxons at We^r- 
mouth. 

802-839. Egbert (Ecgberht) was king of the 
West Saxons. In 827 he conquered Mercia to 
the north of the Thames, and so virtually be- 
came King of England, styling himself such in a 
General Council held at Winchester in 829. To 
a certain extent he brought all the kingdoms of 
England, except Wales, together. In 833 the 
Danes and Northmen landed in thirty-six vessels 
and defeated Egbert in Wessex. In 836 Egbert 
fought them again in Cornwall (to which point 
the Danes had come from Ireland), and defeated 
them. 

839. Ethelwulf succeeded Egbert. 

851. The Danes arrived again at the mouth of 
the Thames with three hundred and fifty ships 



ALFRED THE GREAT 19 

and took Canterbury and London. This was 
when Alfred, son of Ethelwulf, was two years of 
age. 

Situation at Alfred's Birth. — The situation, 
then, when Alfred was born, and when his father, 
Ethelwulf, was on the throne as the West Saxon 
king, was this : The kingdom of Wessex had had 
its ups and downs: it had grown great and then 
lost prestige ; it had ruled and been ruled ; it had 
been overrun by King Arthur and had slain him ; 
it had overcome the adjoining kingdoms for a 
time and seen them disintegrate but not pass 
away; and finally, it was left wholly alone to 
fight against the greatest foes that ever came to 
the English shores, after the Romans — the Teu- 
tons and the Danes. Decade after decade, cen- 
tury after century, the men of Wessex were 
routed but never subdued, and they alone, when 
all their brethren among the other Saxons and 
Angles gave way before the mighty invasion from 
Scandinavia, had the courage, the character, the 
patriotism to fight and win, to fight and lose, and 
to fight again their invaders, until at last, under 
Alfred, they won a complete victory for their 
country. Brave old fellows, grim, untutoripd 
warriors, who looked not more to their own 
hearthstones than to the future of their children 
and to the land of their adoption, the world has 
never given them sufficient credit for saving, nay, 
for making England ! 



20 ALFRED THE GREAT 

CHAPTER II 
Alfred in His Youth 

Birth of Alfred. — Alfred was the youngest son 
of Ethelwulf (or ^thelwulf),^ king of the West 
Saxons, and was born at Wantage, In Berkshire, 
probably in the year 849.9 A monument to him 
now stands in the marketplace of that town, 
erected only twenty-eight years ago. The location 
is in the midst of a rolling country, delightfully 
quiet, abounding in pastoral scenery, still, as al- 
ways, in summer a centre for gallants who seek 
pure air and exhilarating sports. The district is 
known as the Vale of the White Horse, and it 
has remarkable richness of soil for grain and for 
pasturage of herds. In the Ninth Century am- 
ple forests were there, and pure and wholesome 
water could be foufid in abundance. One who 
visits it, to-day, will scarcely wonder that in 
Wantage Ethelwulf, the king, made a habitation 
for his family, for there is no better inland site 
in all England, not even in Winchester itself, 
which Alfred made his own capital in later years. 

Wantage was not Ethelwulf 's only abode; he 
had another royal house at Chippenham, where his 
only daughter, Ethelflaeda, was married to Ethel- 
red, King of Mercia, (the district in the centre of 
Britain, adjoining Wessex on the north). This 
marriage connected the Saxons and the Angles by 
a new tie. Perhaps Ethelwulf had other resi- 
dences, for, while kings of Britain in that day 
were primitive in many ways, they loved hunt- 
ing, hawking and fishing, as well as fighting, and 



ALFRED THE GREAT 21 

they chose out large estates in places best suited 
to those purposes. Alfred was born in the win- 
ter, and probably in a one-storied house, made of 
stout English oak clamped with irons, as the cus- 
tom was. 

When Alfred was born the kingdom of Wes- 
sex, which then included within Its sphere of in- 
fluence the whole of Sussex and also Kent (the 
Jutes having been brought into the dominion), 
extended from present Exeter in the west to near 
Canterbury on the east, and from the river 
Thames to the southern coast, Including the Isle 
of Wight. Roughly speaking these counties com- 
prised Ethelwulf's country: Dorset, Hants, Sus- 
sex, Kent, Somerset, Wilts, Berks, Surrey, and 
a slight portion of Devonshire. London was on 
the north side of the Thames in Mercia ; it was, 
therefore, an alien city, small but growing. Wes- 
sex extended about two hundred and twenty-five 
miles east and west, and had an average width of 
not over sixty miles north and south. It com- 
prised about one-fifth of present England. As the 
Angles, who were the allies of the Saxons, had 
far less grit than they, and no great king, nor gen- 
eral, for leader, the Saxons had practically to meet 
the Danish hordes single-handed, while at the 
same time the larger nation of Angles went to 
pieces before their foes. 

Ethelwulf's Family. — Ethelwnlf, who reigned 
for nineteen years (839-'59), had four sons, be- 
side the one daughter just named. His wife was 
Osburga, a daughter of his cup-bearer, of the race 
of Cerdlc, the same king from whom Ethelwulf 



22 ALFRED THE GREAT 

was descended. She was an extremely religious 
woman. The sons were: i. Ethelbald. He 
made trouble for his father and for Alfred, as will 
soon appear. He reigned two years after Ethel- 
wulf (858-'6o). 2. Ethelbert. He succeeded 
Ethelbald (860-'66). 3. Ethelred. He suc- 
ceeded Ethelbert (866-'7i). 4. Alfred. 

With the first mentioned sons Alfred had mpre 
or less to do. They were men of different char- 
acters, not one of them, however, having the 
strong common sense, the judgment, the courage 
of the youngest of the brothers. The father and 
three sons, who reigned successively for thirty- 
two years (from 839 to 871) performed both val- 
uable and valueless services for their little domin- 
ion; it was Alfred alone who saved and built up 
the kingdom, as we shall soon see. 

The Reign of Ethel wulf. — In beginning a brief 
sketch of the father of Alfred the Great, we must 
look again for the moment at the actual situation 
of the country when he took the Wessex throne. 
He became king in 839 (possibly in 837), suc- 
ceeding his father, the great Ki-ng Egbert (Ecg- 
berht, as spelled in the Saxon Annals). It was 
Egbert who had raised up Wessex to its highest 
supremacy in arms, and had given it lordship 
over all the territory just described as constituting 
the kingdom of Wessex. He had also extended 
his victories far into the north, so that Wessex 
had become the dominant factor in all Britain's af- 
fairs; Egbert being recognized as the over-lord 
of the other adjacent territories. He it was who 
gave for the second time, and this time perma- 



ALFRED THE GREAT 23 

nently, the name of England to what had been 
styled Angle-land (about 827). But after these 
victories came the Danes, or Northmen. They 
were, strictly speaking, not Danes, but a mix- 
ture of hordes from Danishland and the North- 
land: pirates, bandits, vikings and whatnot, all 
bent on plundering Britain. The Northmen had 
been, previously, sea-robbers on Celtic coasts ; had 
been to Ireland (in 795), where the Scots were; 
had plundered Hamburg (845) ; had gone later 
to France, sailed up the Seine to Paris, and 
found there a land so fair that they decided, later, 
to make it their own. Indeed these Northmen 
subsequently were the Normans.^° 

In Ethelwulf's day, beginning with the very 
start of his reign, but especially in 851, these rob- 
bers came down by thousands upon the eastern 
coast of England, a motley barbarian host, well 
leadered, to enrich themselves with the wealth of 
the monasteries that had been built up and made 
rich by the monks who had followed St. Augus- 
tine. It was no longer, as in the Roman time, 
Christian coming to conquer pagan, but pagan 
coming to conquer Christian. All Britain was 
more or less a " converted land ;" a land which, 
however its people might war with each other, 
had forsaken the religion of Woden and Thor 
for the religion of Christ, and the Danes were 
out-and-out pagans. 

The Danes — let us call them such, because the 
Saxons so called them — appeared first upon the 
British coast at Jarrow and Holy Island (784) ; 
and afterward obtained a foothold in Ireland 



24 ALFRED THE GREAT 

(833), and drove Egbert from the field, though 
he subsequently regained what he had lost. Eg- 
bert may not have thought these foreign foes 
would ever secure a permanent foothold, but 
when they came down again in the reign of his son 
Ethelwulf, it was discovered that they were worse 
than Picts and Scots, or even the descendants of 
the original Celts, who had for some centuries 
withdrawn from their old homes and survived 
chiefly in Wales. These Danes came only for 
pillage, it is true, but such pillage Saxons had nev- 
er heard of before! They came into all the nar- 
row rivers, and pounced upon the defenseless vil- 
lages and monasteries that were everywhere un- 
protected. 

In the Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon 
(1084-1155), there is a description of the per- 
sistence and celerity of action on the part of 
these pirates that tells the whole tale: " It was 
wonderful how, w^hen the English kings were 
hastening to encounter them in the eastern dis- 
tricts, before they could fall in with the enemy's 
bands, a hurried messenger would arrive and say, 
'Sir King, whither are you marching? The 
heathens have disembarked from a countless fleet 
on the southern coast, and are ravaging the towns 
and villages, carrying fire and sword into every 
quarter.' The same day another messenger would 
come running, and say, 'Sir King, whither are 
you retreating? A formidable enemy has landed 
in the west of England, and if j^ou do not quickly 
turn your face toward them, they will think you 
are fleeing, and follow in your rear with fire and 



ALFRED THE GREAT 25 

sword.' Again, the same day, or on the morrow, 
another messenger would arrive, saying, * What 
place, O noble chiefs, are you making for? The 
Danes have made a descent in the north ; already 
they have burnt your mansions; even now they 
are sweeping away your goods; they are tossing 
your young children raised on the points of their 
spears; )^our wives, some they have forcibly dis- 
honored, others they have carried off." 

'' To men of that day," says Green, the English 
historian (i837-'83), "it must have seemed as 
though the world had gone back three hundred 
years." Yes, nine hundred years. The Roman in- 
vasion was as nothing to it, for the Romans built 
up and did not pull down, while the Danes came 
only to destroy. They seemed to be devils incar- 
nate, having neither pity for the poor or weak, 
nor regard for the sacred or princely. Christian 
priests were slain at their altars ; art, government 
and religion, not to speak of quiet homelife, or 
progress in the upbuilding of an English nation, 
were equally in danger of being overthrown in 
one simultaneous catastrophe. 

Ethelwulf was a prince less forceful than 
his father. He was brave, he was true, but the 
elements of great generalship were not in him. He 
met the invaders valiantly, and on the whole suc- 
cessfully. Had they been disposed at first to set- 
tle in the country, instead of acting as mere ma- 
rauders and plunderers, they would probably have 
continued to molest the nearer coasts of the An- 
gles, whose armies were so much weaker than 
those of the Saxon king. But they knew that 



26 ALFRED THE GREAT 

southern England was richer in towns and mon- 
asteries than Anglia, and, after each raid, they re- 
turned to their Northland with the plunder, and 
then planned another incursion into Kent, Sussex 
and Wessex, and this they kept up for a series of 
years. 

As soon as Ethelwulf began to reign he deemed 
it wise to restrict his immediate oversight to Wes- 
sex proper and the country just north of it, and so 
he divided the Saxon territory into two parts, in- 
viting his relative Athelstan" to be king of 
Essex, Kent and Sussex, while he retained Wes- 
sex. Athelstan took charge of the subordinate 
kingdom, while Ethelwulf held the higher throne 
in Wessex. Swithin, afterward St. Swithin, had 
educated Ethelwulf, and the latter's father, King 
Egbert, had instructed him in military discipline. 
The first important act of Ethelwulf when king 
was to make Swithin Bishop of Winchester. Then 
came the great incursions of the Danes, and his 
hands were full. He soon fought three bloody 
battles, at Rochester, Canterbury and London, 
with what success history does not state, but dis- 
couraging to his foes. The pirates for the next ten 
years turned their chief attention to France, and 
so, from about 841 to 851, the country had peace. 

In the meantime Alfred was born (849) ai 
Ethelwulf's royal residence at Wantage. 

In 850 the Danes landed on the Isle of Than- 
et, near the mouth of the Thames, wintered there, 
and, in 851, others joined them, in 350 vessels, 
came up the Thames, and sacked Canterbury and 
London. They gave battle to Ethelwulf at Oke- 



ALFRED THE GREAT 27 

ley, and Ethelwulf was victor; so much so, says 
the historian of that time, that Ethelwulf and his 
son, Ethelbald, " there made the greatest slaughter 
among the heathen army that we have heard re- 
ported to this present day, and there got the vic- 
tory." Other engagements, with other divisions 
of Ethelwulf 's army, were also successful, and the 
Danes withdrew from England till Ethelwulf 
was dead, save as to one or two unimportant de- 
scents upon the coast. Ethelwulf followed up 
his victories by joining with the Mercians, who 
were his vassals, and chastising the Welsh. 

In 854, after consultation with his Witan (his 
assembly of thanes), he published a charter for 
the Saxons, which was adopted by all the co- 
related nations, and which gave one-tenth of each 
manor as a tithing to the church. This was, 
probably, the origin of the state church in Eng- 
land. 

Alfred Goes to Rome. — In 853, when Alfred 
could have been but four years of age, (if his 
birthyear was really 849) , the Bishop of Winches- 
ter, Swithin, obtained the consent of Alfred*s 
father to take the lad to Rome. It was a long 
journey of more than a thousand miles, all by 
land except for the short crossing of the English 
Channel, and usually occupied three months, if 
made with ordinary speed. The two had with 
them an escort of nobles and commoners. They 
stopped for a time at the court of France, and 
journeyed slowly, as was the custom with such 
retinues. Pope Leo IV. was on the Papal throne, 
and he received both visitors most kindl}^, anoint- 



28 ALFRED THE GREAT 

ing Alfred, it Is said, as a future king, (doubtless 
at Ethelwulf's personal request). We know lit- 
tle else concerning this event, but a copy of an 
interesting letter from the Pope to Ethelwulf con- 
cerning the ceremony has been recently discovered 
among the papers of the Vatican. Leo wrote: 
" We have affectionately received your son El- 
fred . . . and have invested him as a spirit- 
ual son with the girdle, insignia and robes of the 
consulate, as is the manner of Roman consuls." 
Some have thought this amounted to a coronation, 
and that there was thus conferred upon the boy 
a titular office under the king of Kent (his youth 
would preclude its being more than that). What 
lends encouragement to this supposition is that, 
just before this time, Athelstan disappears 
from history. The company must have returned 
home within nine months or a year, unless (as 
some historians think) Alfred remained at Rome. 
Two years later, Ethehvulf himself went to 
Rome, and took Alfred with him, if, indeed, Al- 
fred did not remain there until his father's com- 
ing. On the way Ethelwulf stopped in France, and 
visited some of the large churches, and also the 
French court of Charles the Bald (King of 
France 840-877, and Emperor of the Romans 875- 

877). 

The two remained in Rome an entire year. 
Much must have been crowded into the period foi 
both father and boy. The king took with him the 
usual retinue of retainers and several nobles, and 
also a number of costly gifts. He took a crown 
four pounds in weight, and various dishes and fig- 



ALFRED THE GREAT 29 

ures in pure gold and silver, besides robes of rich 
silk interwoven with gold. There is every evi- 
dence that, on this first visit of any king of the 
Saxons to the Eternal City, Ethelwulf was wel- 
comed and prized as a good king, deserving of 
honor, and of as royal a line as that of any other 
monarch in Europe. In truth the Pope must have 
taken a fancy to the king, for the Saxon record 
of his doings runs thus: ''Leo was then Pope of 
Rome, and took him," (Ethelwulf) " for his son 
at confirmation." This may mean that Ethelwulf 
was confirmed as if he had been a son of the 
Pope, or it may mean that Alfred was too young 
to be confirmed into the Church but his father 
stood sponsor for him, the father " for his son " 
taking the usual vows. That Alfred never for- 
sook the Church is certain. If subsequently, in his 
own time, it had turmoils and retrograded in 
some of its high purposes, it still found in Al- 
fred a steadfast friend. 

It is most probable that, before he undertook 
this journey, Alfred's mother was dead; for on 
the return journey through France, when he again 
visited the French king, Ethelwulf courted for 
three months and married Judith, the daughter of 
Charles the Bald. She is said to have been only 
twelve, or at most fourteen years of age. The cer- 
emony occurred probably at Rheims, and at its 
conclusion the young bride was crowned, and was 
placed beside her husband on a throne. The fact 
of her youth, and especially the incident of her be- 
ing placed upon the throne, so that she, a foreigner, 
was actually Queen of the Saxons, led to great 



30 ALFRED THE GREAT 

dissatisfaction afterwards ; the more so because of 
another untoward event in her life, soon to be 
mentioned. 

Osburga, who was the mother of Alfred, 
could have had but little to do In the formation of 
the real character of the boy. If It be true that she 
died when he was only three or four years of age. 
That she was a saintly woman we know. We 
know less of the character of Judith at this time, 
but It Is certain that, when Ethelwulf returned 
with his bride, his eldest son, Ethelbald, whom he 
had left to reign in his stead during his absence, 
resented the marriage, and so did many of the 
Saxon nobles. 

As a result of this marriage Ethelwulf — it is 
said at the instigation of Alstan, Bishop of Sher- 
bourne, and Eauwalf, ealdorman of Somerset — 
determining over all things to have peace at home, 
turned over to Ethelbald his Wessex kingdom (in 
856) and contented himself for the few remaining 
months of his life in ruling the subordinate king- 
dom of Kent, Sussex, Essex and Surrey (Athel- 
stan, once ruler, being dead). He also made a will 
that his second son, Ethelbert, should take the 
same subordinate kingdom, after Ethelw-ulf's 
death. Ethelbald was not over-popular, and per- 
haps Ethelwulf could have regained his hold on his 
Wessex people, but, at all events, he was too good 
a man to fight against his own eldest son, and he 
surrendered the throne rather than war with him. 

Of such stock as this Alfred sprang; upon the 
pattern of his father's meekness his character was 
largely formed; is It any wonder that he had 



ALFRED THE GREAT 31 

within him all the elements of a sound, sweet and 
noble character! 

Ethelwulf died in 857, and was buried at Win- 
chester. By his will he continued Ethelbald as 
king of Wessex, and gave Ethelbert the territory 
over which Ethelwulf had just reigned. His large 
landed estates he divided into two portions, the 
larger of which was bequeathed to three of his 
sons, Ethelbald, Ethelred and Alfred, and the 
smaller to his daughter, Ethelflaede (sometimes 
called Ethelswitha), who had married Burhred, 
king of Mercia, and a distant relative. It 
was also directed that the larger estate should 
be held by the sons jointly among them, and that 
it should ultimately become the property of the 
survivor; under that clause of the will Alfred, in 
a few years, became sole owner of most of his 
father's real estate. 

The Reign of Ethelbald.— -Ethelbald, on his 
father's death, forgot his antipathy to Judith, his 
step-mother, and married her, which created a 
scandal, being contrary to the laws of the church, 
if not of the state. The people protested, and the 
Bishop of Winchester induced him to effect a 
separation. She returned to her father's court in 
France, subsequently eloped with and married 
Baldwin Bras-de-Fer, a noble, who lived royally 
in Flanders. From their son, who subsequently 
married Alfred's daughter Elfrida, descended 
Matilda, wife of William the Conqueror, head of 
the Norman-English kings. 

It is quite apparent that Alfred grew up to 
manhood without a mother's training. There is 



32 ALFRED THE GREAT 

one thing, however, that Alfred must have learned i 
from Judith — to read and w^rite. She must have 
been the one, and not his natural mother, of whom 
it is related that she first interested Alfred in 
books in this wise: " His mother, then, one day 
showed to Alfred and an older brother an orna- 
mental manuscript of Saxon poems. To tempt 
them to begin to learn she said she would give 
the book to the boy who could first learn to read 
it. . . Alfred was delighted with the beauty 
of the initial letter. Alfred spoke first, though 
the younger. * Will you really give it to the one 
who can most quickly understand and recite it be- 
fore?' She, glad and smiling, said, ' To him will 
I give it.' He took it from her hand, went to his 
master and read it. When it was read, he brought 
it back and recited it." "It is not at all improb- 
able," says Thomas Hughes, in his Life of Alfred, 
" that Judith did not know of his power of mem- 
ory, and that, instead of learning to read it, in 
our sense of the word, he got his master to read 
it over till he knew it by heart and could point 
with his finger to the words as he recited them." 
When Alfred's father died he was (probably) 
but nine years of age, and his education devolved 
upon his three brothers. So far as we know that 
education consisted chiefly in being taught to 
read and write, and also the sterner arts of the 
chase and of military discipline. That he early 
knew of the chase we can believe, for he was al- 
ways fond of hunting, falconry and fishing; and 
that he must have learned the art of war well is 
even more certain, for he afterwards practiced it 



ALFRED THE GREAT 33 

with a master hand. No man ever became at 
twenty-one a great general without previous prep- 
aration for it. 

Ethelbald only lived three years after his father, 
(dying 86o) . He had been a courageous warrior, 
and was long lamented by the men of Wessex as 
one whose death was " a national calamity." 

The 'Reign of Ethelbert. — Ethelbert succeeded 
to both kingdoms, that of his father and of his 
brother, but he only lived to enjoy the double 
throne for a period of five years (860-866). Dur- 
ing his reign there were several and nearly disas- 
trous advents of the Danes. Winchester wsis 
sacked, but subsequently the Danes were defeated 
w^th considerable slaughter. Raids were also made 
in northeastern England. The whole country was 
under arms, prepared to defend itself, when 
Ethelbert died. 

The Reign of Ethelred. — Ethelred was the 

third son of Ethelwulf, and to him the throne 

now came in succession, probably, as in the case 

I of Ethelbert, less under law than under the custom 

! of selecting the member of a family best qualified. 

■ The Witan, otherwise known as the " Great 

Council of Wessex," so directed, and it was a 

[ body of the wisest men of the kingdom, but Al- 

I fred, according to some, could have been jolnt- 

\ king with his brother had he desired. He chose, 

I instead, to be called '' secundarius," or second in 

' the kingdom. If he really so chose, it proves his 

loyalty to his brother, his modest judgment of his 

own abilities, and his desire to mature more fully 

and " bide his time" before becoming king. 



34 ALFRED THE GREAT 

The period had now arrived for Alfred to show 
his manly qualities as a fighter. He was a lad of 
seventeen when Ethelred began to reign. About 
that same year (866) In the fall, several thousand 
Danish warriors swooped down on East Anglla, 
spent the winter near the coast, marched north- 
ward and took possession of York. York was 
about 1 80 miles northeast of Winchester, the capi- 
tal of Wessex. The Danes overcame all opposi- 
tion and temporarily settled down at York. The 
next year they marched south and took Notting- 
ham. Then the King of Mercia, Burhred, who 
had married the sister of Ethelred and Alfred, 
sent to Ethelred for help. He responded at once 
and took Alfred with him, and the combined army 
of Mercia and Wessex recaptured Nottingham. 

The Northmen now went into Lincolnshire, 
burnt monasteries and plundered generally. They 
reached Peterborough and then Ely, where they 
sacked the monasteries, and priests and nuns per- 
ished in the most cruel manner. For two years 
they overran the whole adjoining region with 
flame and sword, but did not get as far as Wes- 
sex. Entering East Anglla, they captured its 
Christian king, Edmund, bound him naked to a 
tree, scourged him, and required him to abjure his 
religion and reign under them, or die. He chose 
martyrdom. He was again whipped, then pierced 
with arrows, and beheaded. St. Edmund, the 
Martyr, has come down In history since as one of 
the great martyrs of the ages. The purity of his 
life and his bravery In death justly commended 



ALFRED THE GREAT 35 

him to the reverential sympathy of future gener- 
ations. 

It looked now, at last, as if Saxon England was 
to be undone, and by the very cousins of the Sax- 
ons themselves, for the Danes and Saxons were 
not unlike in origin, race, language, customs or 
appearance. In the meantime, what were Ethel- 
red and Alfred doing? It appeared as if they 
were doing nothing. Three years in the field and 
no results! The Mercians were too terrified to 
act, and Ethelred was gathering together and 
[drilling his Saxons. Winter followed winter; 
and the winters in England were colder and long- 
,er than at the present day. Little fighting ever 
occurred in winter, and in this case none in sum- 
mer. The Saxons, however, were " getting ready." 

At last, in 871, Alfred being past twenty-one, 
and sharing now with his brother in the leadership 
of the army, though Ethelred was the general in 
iresponsible charge, the time arrived for bloody 
conflict. The Danes reached Reading, in Wessex, 
fortified it, and prepared to go further into Saxon 
territory. Four days after they arrived there, 
Ethelred and Alfred came up with their army — 
we do not know just where it had been, nor its 
strength — and undertook to storm the Danish en- 
trenchments, but without success. The Danes 
were valorous, well officered and skilful in battle, 
and the Saxons knew it well. 

Then occurred the scene which was the first 
memorable one in Alfred's life. At night each side 
1 prepared for a great battle next day. When morn- 
ling came, the Uanes were ready in two divisions 



36 ALFRED THE GREAT 

on an eminence, and they came on for the fight. 
Ethelred was in his tent at mass. Alfred believed 
in the mass, but he knew there was no time for 
delay. He waited, sending in word to his broth- 
er, who came not, and then, believing his present: 
business was fighting rather than prayer, Alfred 1 
gave the orders to charge the enemy, and led his; 
men up the hillside — to victory! "The banner 
of the White Horse floated triumphantly over the 
Danish Raven." 

This first great battle of Alfred's was probably 
near what is now called White Horse Hill, at 
Ashdown, near Uffington, where may be seen to- 
day, what is believed to have been cut there in the • 
hillside over a thousand years ago, the enormous 
figure of a white horse, 370 feet long. It is said 
to have been made by order of Alfred some 
years after this battle, to commemorate his first 
victory.^^ The white horse was the emblem of the 
Saxon armies, as the raven was of the Danish. 

The Danes were pursued in confusion to Read- 
ing, some thirty miles away. One of their kings, 
and five leading jarls were slain, with many thou- 
sands of men. It was a great victory. 

Within two weeks another battle was fought 
at Basing. In a brief time still another was fought 
at Morton. In each of these cases the Saxons 
claimed a victory, but, as the Danes remained af- 
ter each battle in possession of the field, they could 
hardly have been such victories as Alfred would 
have liked. In this last battle Ethelred was 
wounded, and died of his wounds. At Eastertide, 



ALFRED THE GREAT 37 

in 871, the king was dead, and Alfred, at twenty- 
two, ascended the English throne. 

Alfred at first declined to be the king, alleging 
his incapacity to do justice to his country in fight- 
ing the hated and ever-increasing Danes, but his 
objections were overruled, and the Archbishop of 
Canterbury placed the crown upon his head. 
Three of his brothers had now reigned in succes- 
sion ; it was his turn next, and probably few kings 
so young had ever come to rule at a time so 
stormy and so fraught with peril to a nation. The 
Danes were making their hardest attempt to 
kvrest England from the Saxons, and it looked as 
f success must eventually perch upon their ban- 
lers, for every ship that came from the Northland 
Drought more and more warriors to swell the 
leathen host. 



CHAPTER III 
Alfred Upon the Throne 

Alfred at Twenty-two. — Twenty-two years 
vould be in these days a youthful period at which 
o mount a throne. True, there are some to be- 
:ome kings or queens earlier, but, if their subjects 
:ould choose the time, thirty would be the mini- 
num of age for such a step. In the United States 
:he President must be thirty-five years of age be- 
'ore he is eligible to his high office. However, in 
Alfred's case there was no option; he stood next 
n the royal line. Besides this, he was an uncom- 
nonly bright, sagacious and learned youth for his 



38 ALFRED THE GREAT 

years and for the age in which he lived. He had 
been brought up with unusual care; he was stxi'i 
dious, thoughtful and brave. He is said to hav<i 
had, like King David, much personal beauty^ 
though weak in constitution and bearing in his 
body the seeds of a disease which never left him. i 
We have not heretofore said that Alfred had 
been married two years before he became king! 
(about 869). We do not know the particulars.^! 
His wife was Elswitha (or Ethelswitha, as somfr? 
times written), the daughter of a Lincolnshirt 
ealdorman, whose name was also Ethelred anci 
who was known as Earl of the Gaini; and it is 
probable he met, wooed and won her while witK; 
his brother in that shire, holding oflF the Danes 
with their joint forces. She was a descendant oi 
one of the kings of Mercia. Her mother aftert 
ward came to live with the daughter, and probal 
bly continued to reside in Alfred's house during 
much of his kingship and until his death. W< 
know this of the marriage feast, however, thaa 
" among innumerable multitudes of people of botl' 
sexes, and after continual feasts, both by day anc 
by night," Alfred " was immediately seized, ir 
presence of all the people, by sudden and over- 
whelming pain." Asser says this, and adds: " Hr 
had this sort of disease from childhood." He als( 
says that on a former occasion it had passed awayv 
owing to Alfred's earnest prayers, but, after it' 
return at this wedding, it continued to his forty » 
fourth year. It has been thought, owing to thi ij 
early death of all his brothers, that the sons o 
Ethelwulf were constitutionally of weak health 



ALFRED THE GREAT 39 

Alfred Negotiates a Peace. — He had scarcely 
)een crowned before the summons was again to 
var. The Danes had been reinforced at Reading 
ind had penetrated Wiltshire, and devastated the 
:ountry for miles around. There was another 
)attle, in which the superior numbers of the 
3anes gained them a victory, although Alfred's 
mpetuosity and bravery at first almost won the 
lay. Nine battles had now been fought within a 
'ear, and the final result, humanly speaking, was 
:ertainly in grave doubt. One more victoiy for 
he Danes and all might be over for England, 
rhen Alfred considered. Could he not make 
erms, and thus secure time to strengthen his 
\^orn-out army? If so, he was sure it would help 
lis cause in the end. In this he manifested no real 
-owardice, but great wisdom. He proposed to 
my peace; he only asked that the Danes retire 
irom Wessex, since he could not demand that they 
eave the country, and he promised them a moder- 
ate sum of money. They consented, and by it 
^Vessex and Alfred gained four years of compara- 
!ive quiet (872-875).'^ 

: During that four years the Danes completed 
he conquest of Mercia, and otherwise spent their 
:ime in ravaging France. The King of Mercia, 
Alfred's brother-in-law, was obliged to flee and 
vent to Rome, where he died. By 876 the Danes 
vere also in possession of all of Northumbria, 
vhere they became actual settlers, and began to 
ill the soil; from thence they were never dis- 
bdged, but in process of time became one with 
Alfred's countrymen. 



40 ALFRED THE GREAT 

Alfred Builds a Fleet. — Since the days of the 
early Britons, who had large vessels and many oJ 
them, the people of Alfred's country had main 
tained no fleet. The Saxons, when they came 
over to England, were good sailors as well as 
fighters, but they had since given up all thoughts 
of being a seafaring people. The Danes came 
with prodigious fleets and landed anywhere on the 
coast, wnth no ships or fighting sailors to molest 
them. Alfred regretted this, and saw that hiji 
England could never become a power to grapph 
successfully with her foes without a navy. Sc 
he determined to revive the art of ship-building 
and sea-fighting. 

The opportunity came during this brief era oi 
peace. He built a small fleet and took command 
of it himself, though he had never been a sailon 
It is said that he had to use "converted Danes' 
(Danes who had become Christians and joinec 
the Saxons), to teach his men seamanship. Ir 
875 he had occasion to prove his valor, and that ot 
his men, who might almost have been called the 
" Beggars of the Sea." They must have seemec 
as " beggars," for their vessels could not have beer]" 
large, nor their experience much above that ol 
amateurs; but they had courage, great faith anc 
an abundance of patriotic and religious zeal, anc 
these count more than numbers. His first nava: 
fight occurred when he met seven Danish vessels 
somewhere ofif the south coast. He captured on( 
ship from the enemy, and gave the rest so hare 
a fight that they made ofif for the Northland, anc 
so Wessex was again saved. 



ALFRED THE GREAT 41 

^ Two More Fighting Years. — Our American 
orefathers thought that seven years (from 1775- 
81) constituted a long, long period in which to 
yage a conflict for home and country. So it was. 
3ut the English folk, as represented by Alfred, 
lad up to this time a far worse enemy to 
ight than the soldiers of Howe or Cornwallis; 
m enemy without scruple, with no aim but to 
)lunder, and yet desperately brave and well- 
Irilled ; and there had been one continued strug- 
gle for a period of nearly twenty years, with the 
)dds always in favor of the final Danish conquest, 
rhere were to be yet two years of bloody war, for 
t was not until 878 that the sword was to be 
iheathed, and Alfred was to reign in lasting 
)eace. 

In those two years events quickly succeeded one 
mother. The Danish Heet again made port in 
;ome of the harbors of the southern coast and sent 
)ut plundering parties, but none of them would 
encounter Alfred. In fact, since Alfred's early 
Hctories with his army, no Danish army would 
neet him in fair and open combat. The Danes 
■aided Exeter, and once more made peace with 
\lfred, only to break it at the first opportunity. 
\ big storm scattered their fleet one day (877), 
md Alfred's fleet finished up what was left of 
:hem ; in the whole one hundred and twenty Dan- 
sh vessels were destroyed. Again there was a 
:ruce, and the Danish landmen moved on up into 
VIercia. 

No historian has ever been able to clear up the 
nystery connected with the hiding of Alfred for 



42 ALFRED THE GREAT 

the four months from January to May, 878. H< 
had been on the whole and everywhere victor 
ious until the first-named month. Then, sudden 
ly, when the Danes reappeared with a fleet o: 
thirty warships on the Devonshire coast, and thein 
army came into Wessex, the courage of his armj 
seems to have suddenly faltered. There wa^^ 
treachery in his own camp, and his men, tired o 
fighting, deserted him. The particulars are no 
known ; they seem to be somewhat mysterious 
But we know the fact that Alfred " with a smal 
band with difficulty retreated to the woods anc 
the fastnesses of the moors." There seems to havi 
been disloyalty and disorganization, yet it ha 
rather been surmised than proven. 

Alfred disappeared; his subjects themselves die 
not know where he w^as. We know that he war 
in Selwood Forest, in Somerset, some seventh 
miles or more west of Wantage, his birthplacci 
and there, in a marsh, on an island formed b; 
two little streams (the island was called Athelne;. 
and contained not over tw^o acres of ground), h 
made a camp and fortified it. Everywhere aroun) 
were alder bushes and then stretches of unbrokei 
forest. 

Here is where, in the absence of true historj 
legend has woven various pretty tales about Al 
f red and his men. One of them concerns his wan 
of food, and the securing of it. He needed bot 
fish and fowl, and the account goes on in thi 
wise: No one was in the hut, one day, but him 
self and his mother-in-law, his people having gon 
out to get game or food. " The King (after hi 



ALFRED THE GREAT 43 

constant wont whenever he had opportunity) was 
reading from the Psalms of David, out of the 
Manual which he carried always in his bosom. At 
this moment a poor man appeared at the door and 
begged for a morsel of bread ' for Christ His 
sake.' Whereupon the King, receiving the stran- 
;ger as a brother, called to his mother-in-law to 
give him to eat. Eadburgha replied that there was 
but one loaf in their store, and a little wine in a 
pitcher. But the King bade her nevertheless to 
give the stranger part of the last loaf, which she 
accordingly did. But when he had been served 
the stranger was no more seen and the loaf re- 
mained whole and the pitcher full to the brim. 
Alfred, meantime, had turned to his reading, over 
which he fell asleep, and dreamed that St. Cuth- 
bert of Lindisfarne stood by him and told him it 
was he who had been his guest, and that God had 
seen his afflictions and those of his people, which 
were now about to end, in token whereof his peo- 
ple would return that day with a great take of 
fish." That day the men brought in enough fish 
" to have fed an army!" And " the next morning 
the King crossed to the mainland in a boat, and 
wound his horn twice, which drew to him before 
noon five hundred men." 

Another legend about Alfred, connected with 
his hiding at Athelney, is told by the historian 
Freeman (i823-'92), who thinks it a likely story, 
in these words: ''Alfred, wishing to know what 
the Danes were about and how strong they were, 
set out out one day from Athelney in the disguise 
of a minstrel, or juggler, and went into the Dan- 



44 ALFRED THE GREAT 

1 

ish camp, and staid there several days amusing 
the Danes with his playing, till he had seen all 
that he wanted, and then went back without any- 
one finding him out." 

One of the jewels probably ow^ned by Alfred 
was found at Athelney, in 1693, and is now in 
the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. 

This jewel, about which much has been written 
is described as a fine specimen of the artistic metal 
work of the Saxon period. It was found not far 
from Athelney Abbey, in Somersetshire, and con- 
sists of a jewel in enamel and gold in battledore 
shape. The obverse is faced wnth an oval plate, 
of rock crystal, nearly one-half an inch thick, 
through which may be seen the enamelled mosaic 
let into cells of gold. The figure is that of a man 
holding a fleur-de-lis in each hand. The reverse 
is a detached plate of gold, on which is elegantly 
traced a fleur-de-lis branching into three stems. 
The inscription is ''Alfred Mee He Ht Gewyr- 
can." (Alfred me ordered to be wrought.) The 
stem terminates in a grotesque figure, representing 
on the obverse the head of a sea-monster. The 
jewel may have been a pendant to a necklace or 
collar, but more likely was an ornament on the 
front of the helmet. Sir Francis Palgrave 
(1788-1861) believes the mosaic enamel figure is 
much older than its setting, and was probably 
presented to King Alfred as a valuable relic by 
the Pope or other great personage in his day. 
The gold setting is clearly of Saxon work. 

Whatever Alfred did that winter and early 
spring, however he got together again an army, he 



ALFRED THE GREAT 45 

did arise from his hiding-place, and the word went 
around that " the King is still alive " (it was 
thought by many that he was dead) ; and, on May 
12, 878, oaths of fealty to him and his country 
were made at Brixton, twenty-five miles east of 
Athelney, and now he was ready to conquer his 
seemingly unconquerable foes. Almost the next 
day, certainly within a few days at most, he 
fought the battle of Ethandune (Eddington), and 
again struck his old-time enemies with a vigor 
and dexterity that were crushing. About a thou- 
sand Danish dead were left on the field and great 
spoils gathered. 

Another Peace. — This was the last refuge in 
this part of England by the army of Guthrum, 
which had troubled Alfred for full eight years. 
Guthrum had been the chief leader of the Danish 
forces since 870, and was the king who had time 
and again made and broken peace with Alfred. 
He had done more to cow and subdue the people 
of Mercia and Wessex than any other of Alfred's 
foes. Now he retreated to the river Avon, but 
was surrounded, and fourteen days thereafter he 
sued for terms, and declared he was ready to be 
baptised as a Christian! Alfred, strangely enough, 
but wisely as the sequel shows, exercising what 
may be properly termed " divine patience," and 
certainly proving his generosity and manliness 
toward a fallen foe, accepted the proffer. He al- 
lowed the remnant of his army to march away, 
and accepted a pledge that Guthrum and thirty of 
his bravest men would appear at a fixed date and 
become Christians. At Wedmore, a sort of royal 



46 ALFRED THE GREAT 

residence of Alfred, they came at the specified date 
seven weeks after the surrender, and Alfred him- 
self was godfather in baptism to Guthrum, giv- 
ing him the Christian name of Athelstan. After 
the ceremony it was agreed that these " con- 
verted " pagans should settle down in East An- 
glia, and govern it as a Danish kingdom, while Al- 
fred should rule his own kingdom in peace. 

The peace concluded at this time (July, 878), 
and known as the '* Treaty of Wedmore," was 
executed in writing and copies of it still exist.^4 
It contains only about two hundred and fifty 
words, and the beginning of it, as rendered into 
modern English, is as follows: 

"Alfred and Guthrum' s Peace: This is the 
peace that King Alfred and King Guthrum, and 
the Witan of all the English nation and all the 
people that are in East Anglia, have all ordained 
and with oaths confirmed for themselves and their 
descendants, as well for born as unborn, who reck 
of God's mercies or of ours." 

It is evident from the Treaty of Wedmore that 
he made no distinction between Englishmen and 
Danes, as to tendering to both alike the promise 
of equal and exact justice. " If a man be slain," 
he said, *' we estimate all equally dear." In the 
provision as to trials for murder, we see the foun- 
dation of the trial by jury, now long enshrined in 
the hearts of Englishmen: " If a king's thane be 
accused of man-slaying, if he dare to clear him- 
self, let him do that with twelve king's thanes." 
If a man were of less degree than a king*s thane, 
he was to clear himself with eleven of his equals 



ALFRED THE GREAT 47 

and with one king's thane. One clause in the 
Treaty indicates that he expected a natural feud 
between the Saxon and Danish people would not 
suddenly cease, and so he ordained that intercourse 
between them should not be without leave: 
"Neither bond nor free may go to the host with- 
out leave, no more than any of them to us." 

The Treaty prescribes the boundaries of the 
kingdoms, the penalties for manslaughter, and 
certain warranties. By it Alfred was established 
as King of the whole of England south of the 
Thames, and of Essex south of the river Lea, and 
of nearly the whole of Mercia. It left the north- 
eastern part of present England to the Danes. 
Thus were laid securely the foundations of a new 
kingdom, which afterwards grew, almost without 
bloodshed, to be one England from Scotland to 
the south coast. 

Guthrum and his followers were loaded with 
gifts, and Alfred continued his reign in compara- 
tive peace, which lasted for fifteen years. 

What Alfred Now Accomplished. — As soon as 
the Treaty of Wedmore had been concluded, Al- 
fred turned his attention to the fortifying of bis 
domains, which were in sore need of it. For the 
lack of anything like forts, or of walls around 
their cities, Wessex and the adjoining sections of 
England had been open to every foe. While the 
Romans had originally fortified some of these cit- 
ies, and erected strong walls around them, they 
had been allowed through the intervening centur- 
ies to go into decay. Such places as Exeter, Lon- 
don, Reading, Chippenham and Peterborough 



48 ALFRED THE GREAT 

could not stand before an army for an hour; only 
in the open fields could the progress of a foreiojn 
army be contested. When the Danes captured a 
city, they had the good sense to fortify it and then 
could not be dislodged. It was the one weak 
point in Saxon warfare that no provision had been 
made for strong and permanent walls or forts. 

Alfred never showed his wisdom to more ad- 
vantage than when he began immediately after 
the Peace to build up fortresses all along the coast. 
Holding as King the bookland^s of his country to 
be used for his country's good, he employed all its 
revenues to fortify the kingdom and to build 
bridges. He found London in the hands of some 
of the Northmen and the seat of pirates, and, 
while formerly it had been a thriving municipal- 
ity, it was miserably run down and inconsequen- 
tial. As it now belonged to him by the Treaty he 
took possession of it, first, however, having 
strengthened his own Wessex in every part. He 
reorganized the entire city. As the account, writ- 
ten almost at the time, says, he " honorably re- 
built the city of London and made it again inhab- 
itable." He put all the masons and mechanics he 
could find — they were mostly foreigners — at work 
at regular pay, and in a few months the city had 
resumed a prosperous look. It soon took the sta- 
tion which it has occupied ever since as the chief 
commercial city of the countr}\ In his day and 
long afterwards Winchester continued to be the 
capital of Wessex (practically of all England), 
but London was given this honor in the days of 
King Canute (994?- 1035). The year in which 



ALFRED THE GREAT 49 

London was thus rebuilt was 886, or eight years 
after the Peace. 

In the meantime Alfred continued to build 
ships. In 882 he went out in person to command 
a fleet, and scattered and destroyed a small Vik- 
ing squadron. In 885 he sent a fleet up along 
the east coast and destroyed sixteen vessels of the 
East Anglian Danes, who were then trying to 
break the Peace. This was succeeded by disaster 
on the sea which only set him to building bigger 
ships. Like Peter the Great, Alfred had now well 
learned the art of ship-building, and he deter- 
mined to build " long ships that were nigh twice as 
large as those of the Danes, some with sixty oar, 
some with more. They were steadier and swifter 
and also higher than others, and were shaped near 
as the Frisian or the Danish ships, but as it 
seemed to himself that they would be most 
handy." With these, in 897, he destroyed twenty 
Viking ships. In the previous year (896) some 
Viking invaders had pushed a fleet up the river 
Lea, to within fifteen miles of London ; it was a 
stream much narrower than the Thames. Here 
the larger ships of Alfred could not get at them, 
if, indeed, they were then at hand, as to which the 
record is silent. But Alfred obstructed the stream 
with, probably, floating booms, and " bottled " the 
fleet up. The Vikings had to abandon them, and 
Alfred took possession of all the vessels. 

Beside this, Alfred largely increased his mili- 
tary force, and had at hand, or ready for call, a 
better, as well as larger, army than he or his pre- 



50 ALFRED THE GREAT 

decessors ever had. In 893 this army was 
put to a severe test and it happened in this wise : 

For fifteen years there had been comparative 
quiet; the Danes themselves, especially such as 
were a party to the Wedmore agreement, had giv- 
en little trouble. In the meantime Alfred's king- 
dom had so grown that it included all of Mercia, 
and also much of Wales, for the kings of the min- 
or Welsh provinces had put themselves under his 
protection. But suddenly Hastings, one of the 
most renowned of the Viking kings, who had des- 
olated Gaul, came over from Boulogne with three 
hundred and thirty sail in two divisions, and 
landed on the shores of Kent. The army brought 
upon these vessels was able to wage a contest 
against Alfred for three long years (893-897). 

Alfred collected his forces, marched into Kent 
and confronted his new foes. Hastings had no 
scruples; he at once decided on an act of perfidy. 
He saw the impossibility of winning over so great 
a general in a pitched battle ; so he offered to de- 
part for a sum of money, gave hostages for the act- 
ual performance of the bond, and, as a further 
proof of sincerity, offered to have his two sons re- 
ceive the sacrament of Christian baptism. Alfred 
believed in his honesty and accepted the offer. 
While the programme was being approved, a 
part of the army of Hastings stole away, and be- 
gan to desolate portions of Wessex. Alfred over- 
took and routed them, upon which they accepted 
terms and departed. Hastings himself now re- 
sumed warfare ; there was a fight at Exeter, again 
resulting in victory, and another in Essex, where 



ALFRED THE GREAT 51 

Alfred's general (his son-in-law, Ethelred) cap- 
tured not only the treasures of Hastings, but that 
king's wife and children. After this last battle 
Hastings promised to depart forever. No more is 
heard of him in history until later, when he again 
desolated a part of France, and, finally, in the 
city of Chartres, ended his career as pirate and 
despoiler by accepting that city and its neighboring 
territories as the lord and vassal of Charles the 
Simple (879-929). 

With the departure of Hastings all the Danes 
he had with him did not leave; there was yet a 
small army of plunderers, who gained fresh re- 
cruits and gave Alfred trouble, until he finally 
routed them and every open enemy from every 
quarter of his kingdom (in 896). Alfred's fine 
powers of organization, his gifted prevision, won 
out; he was enabled to spend the last four years 
of his life in peace. 

Alfred's war record was, from first to last, with 
the exception of the four months of his hiding, an 
pen, brave, forceful and victorious record. He 
nade few if any mistakes. The worst than can 
be said of him as a warrior is that he was too mer- 
ciful ; that he was too ready to accept proffers of 
peace, when his foes never intended to carry out 
the terms. He was so honest and straightforward 
himself that he believe in the integrity of pagan 
kings and chieftains when they put themselves up- 
on their honor, although he too frequently discov- 
ered that their ideas of truth and honor were 
wholly at variance with his own. But to put 
one's self in his place, even in thought, is a diffi- 



52 ALFRED THE GREAT 

cult task. His foes came from Scandinavian coun- 
tries in endless hordes; they were well-trained 
fighters; they often outnumbered him; they had 
little to lose by defeat; he had every possible 
disadvantage on his side except patriotism and jus- 
tice. Who can say that, if he had been in Al- 
fred's place, with the same conscience and innate 
love for peace, and with the same uncertain and 
often treacherous underlings, he would have dealt 
more rigorously with his enemies after they actual- 
ly sued for peace? Events proved that in the end 
Alfred justified himself in possessing as great a 
moral character as was his leadership in battle. 

Alfred's Last Four Years. — The events of the 
last four years of Alfred's life, so far as they made 
history, may be summed up in a few words. They 
have been called his "silent years," because he was 
quietly pursuing the arts of peace. In another 
chapter we shall call attention more specifically to 
some of the wonderful things he accomplished, but 
the following brief summary will show the scope 
of his later achievements. 

He laid down laws for his people that have not 
yet been wholly departed from in spirit and form 
by the English statutes. He established courts of 
justice, that did give justice to every man. He 
made it safe for a traveler to journey anywhere 
over his kingdom and be unmolested. He laid doAvn 
the boundaries of the shires (counties) , so that they 
were certain, and not, as before, indefinite ; in fact 
his " survey " of the country, duly engrossed and 
called the " Roll of Winchester," was the founda- 
tion of the " Domesday-Book " of William the 



ALFRED THE GREAT 53 

Z!onqueror. He remade the whole civil fabric of 
English shires and hundreds,"^ and on his basis, 
'or the most part, they stand to this da}^ He 
"alsed large revenues, not for his own benefit, but 
'or the good of the nation. He rebuilt monaster- 
es, one of them being at Athelney (doubtless as 
I thank-offering), and abbeys (chiefly to secure 
^ood schools and also to promote religion) ; but, 
IS his own people would not become monks, he 
lad to fill his monasteries with monks from 
ibroad. He built substantial roads and bridges; 
stabllshed numerous churches; laid foundations 
"or colleges; sent abroad and had learned monks 
:ome to England as instructors; gathered around 
lim wise counselers and authors; established the 
saxon literature ; translated and wrote books ; sent 
embassies to Rome; and sent gifts to Christian 
:hurches as far off as Palestine, and perhaps to 
[ndia. 

No man ever gathered around him more true 
md trusty friends; no man was ever more happy 
n his private, domestic life ; no king ever had more 
lonor In his time from the kings of other nations, 
:han Alfred. When he died, he was lamented at 
lome and abroad with the keenest sorrow. 



CHAPTER IV 
Something About the Saxons 

The Saxon Language. — The Saxon languag:e 
vas an importation from the north of Europe — 
rom the land of the Saxons. Subsequently it 



54 ALFRED THE GREAT 

merged into Anglo-Saxon, which was the inter- 
mixture of Saxon and of dialects used by the An- 
gles, but the Saxon speech was the stronger and 
more enduring. 

The Saxons gained little in their tongue from 
the British Celts; the two languages would not 
amalgamate. Our English of to-day has some 
words in its vocabulary purely Celtic, as rail, pail, 
mop, hiitton, basket, etc., and various Celtic prop- 
er names ; but the Celts did not so enrich our pres- 
ent mother-speech as naturally they should have 
done. The Danes in England added a few word^ 
to the spoken language of Alfred's day, but scarce- 
ly more than the Celts. The Latin, of course, 
added thousands of words to the tongue during 
and after Alfred's time, and some have come 
from the Norman-French. i 

Was this Saxon language such as would now be 
intelligible to our ears? Certainly not. Moderr 
English is no more ancient Saxon than ancient 
Saxon is Greek, so far as one may determine who 
simply listens to it. Here are two lines of a pas| 
sage from King Alfred ; who of our readers woulc 
recognized them as of English speech, except iii 
three of its words: 

" Fela spella him saedon tha 
Beormas aehther ge of hym," etc. 

How many ordinary readers could translate i 
literally to be: 

"Many tidings (to) him said the 
Beormas either of their." 

The Anglo-Saxon tongue became changed an(^ 



ALFRED THE GREAT 55 

langed as the centuries went on, until, in the 
ays of Chaucer (1328-1400) and Wycliffe 
i324-'84), it developed pretty nearly into mod- 
•n speech. The changes from that period to King 
ames' time were modifications only, and, from 
le time of that King's ecclesiastical council to 
le present, they have been so slight in all founda- 
on words and phrases, that the Bible of 161 1 
ill remains as the grandest expression of the im- 
roved Saxon tongue, and of present English lit- 
-ary speech. Nevertheless, it remains true that 
le language of Alfred would not be understood 
y any but the learned — and by few of them — in 
Lir own day. 

Manners and Customs of the Saxons. — It may 
e interesting to take a look at the state of society 
t this period. What kind of subjects did Alfred 
ossess; what were their habits, customs, educa- 
on ; wherein did they differ from Englishmen of 
)-day ? 

As has been stated, his people were Saxons, of 
le same general, but not specific, nationality as 
\t Danes, and had manners and personal char- 
zteristics not unlike their late pagan foes, except 
5 these had been modified by the leavening influ- 
ices of Christianity. But these leavening influ- 
ices had been much; not thorough, but of the 
reatest importance. The monks who had gone 
England from Rome were not all wise men, 
it, for the most part, they were sincere and self- 

crificing evangelists, and the monasteries they 
id erected In all the important towns and points 

ere centres both of piety and learning. The 



56 ALFRED THE GREAT | 

monasteries were the schools of the kingdom. 
They were schools for the few, it is true, but they 
were beacon-lights to the surrounding communi- 
ties. 

The Saxons were not an educated people. They 
had had no opportunities for this, having beer 
fighters for generations. Among the masses su- 
perstitions abounded. Alfred was the first king tc 
give them the incentive to education, and, in the 
first years of his period of long peace, it was one 
of the earliest matters that gained his attention 
They were also poor as well as ignorant of th( 
knowledge of books. The monks, too, were poor 
but they knew and practiced the arts of painting 
and music, while possessing a knowledge of Latir 
and Greek, of astronomy and, of course, of theol 
ogy. 

Fine houses the Saxons did not have and did no 
desire. They had small, wooden huts, withou 
chimneys, the smoke of their fires escaping by 
hole in the roof. A house which contained a sec 
ond story was rare, and in such case the entranc 
was from the outside by a stairway, or ladder. T 
prevent drafts curtains were hung up by the door 
in winter. But they had good living; they wer 
not amateurs in the art of cooking well, and the; 
ate much and often. The doors of the houses al 
ways opened outward and were left open (that 15 
were never locked or bolted), as this would hav 
betokened a want of hospitality. This custom 
unfastened doors still prevails in Norway and 1: 
some other sections of northern Europe. Chaii 
were unknown, but benches, stools and settles toa 



ALFRED THE GREAT 57 

their place. They carved these elaborately, as they 
also did their cradles. Their dishes were of bone, 
horn or wood, and their drinking-horns (they 
Irank immoderately of strong liquors) were or- 
lamented with silver or gold. Those Saxon drink- 
ing-horns were always famous, and the descend- 
ants of Saxons for centuries, even to Shakespeare's 
day, continued to make and use most elaborate 
and beautiful specimens of that handiwork. It is 
said that the Danes introduced the custom of im- 
moderate drinking, but, if so, the Saxons never 
forgot the lesson. Tables of the wealthy had on 
them immense cloths, the ends of which also 
served as napkins. 

As to dress, the Saxon men wore a tunic of 
woolen in winter and linen in summer. It 
reached to the knees and was fastened by a belt to 
the waist. This was the usual custom of all Teu- 
tonic nations, and is yet of the Laplanders in the 
far north of Scandinavia. The women wore a 
linen tunic with tight sleeves, and the wealthy 
used embroidery of much richness. The personal 
ornaments worn were numerous, the few rich 
Saxon nobles being fond of gold and silver jewels. 

It is well-know^n that Alfred imported gold 
artificers, and that among other things practiced 
by skilled workers was a weaving in gold-wire of 
stoles for the monks. Anselm (1033-1109), 
Archbishop of Canterbury, says that he saw, in 
1098, a Canterbury vestment of King Canute's 
time (994-1035) which was the most gorgeous 
cope he had ever seen. This was doubtless in 



58 ALFRED THE GREAT 

needlework, in which the skill of the Saxon ladies 
was very great. 

As to Saxon songs and Saxon love of music, con-^ 
siderable has been written going to show that the 
people generally were strangely fond of war-songs 
and of music upon the harp. 

There was farming, but it was on a meagre 
scale, the country being largely covered with im- 
mense forests, and the long conflict having made 
it impossible for the people to give much atten-l 
tion to agriculture. Not over one-fifth of the 
land was available for tillage. There is nc 
doubt, however, that they had a genuine taste for 
farming and otherwise possessed great natural ca- 
pacity for getting on. They were honest and in^ 
dustrious. 

A characteristic of the men was the wearing oi 
long hair and the cultivation of forked beards. 
The vice of tattooing the skin prevailed. Among 
the ordinary foods mentioned were fish, eggs, but^ 
ter, cheese, beans, herbs, honey and salt. During 
the summer much food was salted down for win- 
ter use. Wine was scarce, but there was plent>^ oi 
mead and ale. Flour was ground by the poor in 
handmills, although there were also water-mills 
and wind-mills. The bread used was made from 
barley. Meat was boiled, broiled and baked. 
Barley flour was universally used for bread. 

That the Saxons had games similar to chess and 
backgammon is certain. They fished as the mod- 
erns do with rod and line, and also the net. The 
arms carried in war were long broadswords and 
short daggers, and circular shields of hide, rimmed 



f^ ALFRED THE GREAT 59 

with metal. They also had helmets of leather on 
metal framework. 

Polygamy was not unknown, and the practice 
seems to have prevailed of a son marrying his 
father's widow when not his mother. This lat- 
ter practice may account in part for the marriage 
of Ethelbert to his step-mother, Judith. 

Horses was not used for agriculture, but oxen ; 
the horses being reserved for the chase and for 



CHAPTER V 

Alfred's Death and Characteristics 

Alfred's Death and Burial. — Alfred died on 
October 26, 901.^7 The cause and the place of 
his death are both unknown. It is not unlikely 
that the malady which had often prostrated him 
was the cause, and it is quite probable he died at 
the capital of his kingdom, Winchester, in Wol- 
vesley Castle, although it may have been elsewhere. 
At all events he was buried in Winchester, per- 
haps in the Church of St. Swithin, perhaps in 
that of St. Peter, or perhaps in the monastery near 
the present Cathedral, which was not then in ex- 
istence, but whose site was occupied by a Saxon 
abbey of the Seventh Century (finished 648), 
which Alfred had begun to supplant by a " New 
Minster." The uncertainty comes of different ac- 



•For a full account of early Saxon customs and history 
see another volume of this "Library," to be published later. 



6o ALFRED THE GREAT 

counts of the place. In Henry I.'s day (1068- 
1135), the abbey was removed about a half mile 
to the west, and from thenceforth was known as 
Hyde Abbey; the removal was to make room for 
the Cathedral and Its close. At that time (mo 
or 1 121), the remains of Alfred were removed to 
the Abbey, and perhaps — not certainly — they 
were found and again reinterred during the last 
century below the flat slab in the peaceful ceme- 
tery just outside the parish church of St. Barthol- 
omew, near the present remains of Hyde Abbey. 
Be this the true spot of the real present resting- 
place of his bones or ashes, or not, one loves to 
think of them as there, out in the open, under the 
blue sky, where birds warble through the summer 
days, and where a buttercup or leaf of yarrow 
can be gathered by the traveler as he muses over 
what a great and manly man King Alfred was. 

Alfred's Will.— Alfred's will has long been 
noted for the Insight it gives into his father's es- 
tates and his own, and for certain notable state- 
ments it contained. Perfect copies of it exist. By 
this will he devised eight manors to his nephew, 
Etheline, eldest son of his brother Ethelward ; to 
his nephew, Ethelwald, three manors; but the 
principal part of his real estate. In Wiltshire and 
Somersetshire, including the royal burgh of Wed- 
more, he gave to his son Edward, who succeeded 
his father as king. He left manors to his other 
children, and to his wife the " homestead " at 
Wantage, where he was born, and also two other 
manors. It was quite In keeping with the affec- 
tion he had for his faithful helpmate, Elswitha, 



ALFRED THE GREAT 6i 

that he left her his birthplace, (and probably 
Ashdown, the scene of his earliest and greatest 
victory). He also gave to each of his sons £500, 
and to his wife and daughters £100 each, and 
left various small legacies to friends, including 
£200 to his servants and poor retainers. "Also," 
he says, "let them," (his servants) "distribute for 
me and for my father and for the friends that he 
interceded for, and I intercede for, £200 — 50 to 
the mass-priests all over my kingdom, 50 to the 
poor ministers of God, 50 to the distressed poor, 
50 to the church that I shall rest at. And I 
know not certainly whether there be so much 
money; nor I know not but that there may be 
more, but so I suppose. If it be more, be it all 
common to them to whom I have bequeathed 
money. And I will that my ealdormen and coun- 
cillors be all there together and so distribute it." 

He evidently wrote all his will with his own 
hand; it was the product of his own beneficent 
mind. To get at the value of these seemingly 
small bequests, the amounts must be multiplied by 
at least five, as the purchasing power of money in 
Alfred's time was fully five times what it is to- 
day; and we are also to remember that the royal 
private purse in his day was not large, and that 
his estates were mostly in lands rather than in 
personalty. 

The most memorable part of Alfred's will, per- 
haps, is this, which declares his requirement that 
his former slaves should remain free: "And I be- 
seech, in God's name and in His saints', that none 
of my relations do obstruct none of the freedom of 



62 ALFRED THE GREAT 

those I have redeemed. And for me the West 
Saxon nobles have pronounced as lawful, that I 
may leave them free or bond, v^hether I will. 
But I, for God's love and my soul's health, w^ill 
that they be masters of their freedom and of their 
will; and I, in the Living God's name, entreat 
that no man do disturb them, neither by money 
exaction, nor by no manner of means, that they 
may not choose such man as they will. And I will 
that they restore to the families at Domerham 
their land deeds and their free liberty, such master 
to choose as may to them be most agreeable, for 
my sake, and for Ethelflaeda's, and for the friends 
that she did intercede for, and I do intercede for." 
Quite worthy to be put alongside of the Procla- 
mation of Emancipation of Abraham Lincoln ! 

Alfred's Successor. — A few words should be 
said about Alfred's successor to the throne, and 
then we must complete a too-brief sketch of this 
"mirror of princes," as Wordsworth terms him, 
by turning to a reconsideration of certain great 
traits of his character, and a further look at some 
of his magnificent achievements, as statesman, as 
religious man and as author. 

Alfred did not and could not name his suc- 
cessor, but the Witan of Wessex did, and they 
named his son Edward. His nephew, Ethelwald, 
however, rebelled at this decision, seized the royal 
castles at Wimbourne and Christchurch, and 
then, finding Alfred's kingdom too strong for any 
pretender, fled, and was not heard of for two 
years. In 904 he came with a fleet of Northmen 
to Essex, and a portion of the Danish population 



ALFRED THE GREAT 63 

of that shire submitted to his authority. The 
next year he attacked Berkshire, and Edward, 
who had been crowned king at Winchester, went 
after him with an army. In an action Ethelwald 
was slain. 

Edward had to fight for his kingdom against 
both traitors at home and Danes from abroad, but 
he eventually overcame all opposition, and even 
the Scots chose him as their ''father" and 'lord." 
He died in 925. In history he is known as Edward 
the Elder. 

The King's Homelife. — That Alfred was 
necessarily away from his home and family a large 
part of the time, there is no doubt. In fact he had 
no settled home, because he was obliged to abide 
now in one county and now in another, in such 
"roj^al residences" as were for the most part of 
the simplest description. We cannot believe that 
at the first Alfred had, as a rule, other than 
buildings of wood, differing only from the build- 
ings of the ordinary wealthy Saxon in being 
larger, so as to take care of his various servants 
and those representatives of other nations — 
diplomats, artists, artisans, military men, learned 
men and monks — who flocked to him, because of 
his exceeding friendliness to all these classes. He 
spent much time, however, at Wolvesey Castle, in 
Winchester, (where his father had educated him). 
Here he often held his court, and here he edited 
the Saxon Chronicles. 

Of his queen, Elswitha (or Ethelswitha) , we 
know little, except as to her faithfulness. She 
trained her children in the best manner, and they 



64 ALFRED THE GREAT . 

all "turned out well." She survived her husband 
four years, dying in 905. 

The King's Children. — We may, in a few sen- 
tences, state the names and what became of each of 
Alfred's children. The eldest, Ethelflaeda, who 
was born in the first year of her father's reign, 
married Ethelred, who was the Ealdorman of 
Mercia. She shared the government with her 
husband, and led a life of activity and benevo- 
lence. The second daughter was Ethelgeda, who 
became abbess of the monastery at Shaftsbury, 
which was the first monastery erected by the King 
after the Peace of Wedmore. The third daugh- 
ter, Elfrida (or Elfthryth), became the wife of 
Baldwin of Flanders, the eldest son of Judith, 
who had been the second wife of Alfred's father, 
and then the wife of his brother. The boys were 
two in number, Edward and Ethelward. Edward 
was courageous, courteous, martial and strenuous, 
following in these respects the path laid out by his 
father. Edward succeeded Alfred, as we have 
seen, and at his death was succeeded by his son, 
Athelstan. Alfred's second and younger son, 
Ethelward, showing a partiality for study, was 
carefully educated, but the particulars of his life 
or time of his death have not been given. 

Alfred's Religious Life. — It may be easily 
gleaned from the foregoing what the religious life 
of Alfred was; how true and deep it proved and 
how it influenced his whole character. From the 
time he went to Rome, he was a thoroughly re- 
ligious boy. In youth and middle age his faith in 
God and in the church never failed. The fact 



ALFRED THE GREAT 65 

that, upon his entrance to the throne, he imme- 
diately began to erect monasteries, and to recon- 
struct those which had been partially destroyed, 
proves that he believed In the monastic life ; Indeed 
it was the only life In that day which protected 
purity, and advanced among young and old a 
knowledge of exalted religious principles. In the 
punishment of crimes, he required that both state 
and church should have jurisdiction over crim- 
inals. While the King and his WItan, or a judge 
and jury, punished state offenders by fines or im- 
prisonment, he also held that they committed a 
moral sin to be dealt with by the spiritual au- 
thorities. So for every crime there was a pre- 
scribed penance. This was an Ideal which could 
not be expected to be continued in England after 
the birth of Protestantism, but in its day it accom- 
plished wonders, and we never hear of any serious 
conflict between church and state. Besides send- 
ing couriers with presents every year to Rome, and 
embassies to far-away lands, taking money for the 
Christian poor, he distributed many gifts among 
his cathedrals, and always had a ready hand of 
help for the poor and the needy. 

He was often at prayer openly in the churches, 
and, though a monarch, deemed it his highest privi- 
lege to kneel humbly on the steps of a church 
altar. He brought up his children as he was 
brought up himself, with a profound dependence 
upon the faithfulness and love of Almighty God, 
and this was the touchstone of his whole character. 

Alfred not only sent various embassies to Rome, 
but it seems that he made a vow before he rebuilt 



66 ALFRED THE GREAT 

London that, if he should be successful in that 
undertaking, he would send gifts to the Christian 
churches in the far East. In other words, while 
he had no men to send as missionaries, he could 
give what then was probably more acceptable to 
the poor churches of Asia, mone3\ That he sent 
gifts to the patriarch of Jerusalem is probable, 
because the latter sent back letters and presents to 
the King. It is also believed that he sent a deputa- 
tion as far as India, where churches had been 
already founded. 

In the days of Alfred there were no candles and 
so he invented them, his motive, however, being 
religious rather than secular. He had made a de- 
termination to give to God half his time, day and 
night, owing to his having neither clocks nor 
watches. Accordingly, he invented candles, which 
were measured to burn exactly four hours each. 
Each candle was divided into twelve equal parts 
by lines drawn upon the surface. As the doors 
and windows of the churches, then of the most 
rude architecture, were full of fissures in plank- 
ings and walls, and as sometimes places for ser- 
vices were only tents, and high winds would blow 
out the candles, or make them burn unevenly, he 
followed up his first invention w^ith a second — a 
lantern. He contrived a box to hold the candle, 
making doors of white ox-horn, reduced to such 
thinness that they were like glass. 

As is stated above, Alfred gave one-half of his 
time to the service of God, either at worship, or 
reading or translating the Psalms and other re- 
ligious works, or in deeds of charity. In addition, 



ALFRED THE GREAT 67 

he gave half of his Income to the Lord. Ethelwulf, 
his father, had thought it sufficient, following the 
practice in Old Testament times, to set aside 
one-tenth part of the income of his royal estates 
"for the glory of God and his own eternal salva- 
tion." Alfred decided that this was not sufficient, 
and he increased it to five-tenths. In other words, 
he divided his income into two equal parts: the 
first secular, and the second ecclesiastical. The 
ecclesiastical portion was divided into four parts : 
the first for the poor of all nations ; the second for 
the monasteries he had founded ; the third for his 
schools, the teaching in which was semi-religious ; 
and the fourth for the neighboring monasteries in 
various parts of England, Wales and Ireland. 

Alfred's own testimony to his life — at least as 
he described it — he summed up himself in one 
of his works: "I can assert this in all truth, that 
during the whole course of my existence I have 
always striven to live in a becoming manner, and 
at my death to leave to those who follow me a 
worthy memorial in my work." 

In this connection it will be interesting to quote 
some of Alfred's own words, to show the purity 
of his soul and to give an insight Into his serene 
and lofty character. The first are words directed 
to his son from his Proverbs :''Thus quoth Alfred: 
My dear son, sit thou now beside me, and I will 
deliver thee true Instruction. My son, I feel that 
my hour is near, my face Is pale, my days are 
nearly run. We must soon part. I shall to an- 
other world, and thou shalt be left alone with all 
my wealth. I pray thee, for thou art my dear 



68 ALFRED THE GREAT 

child, strive to be a father and a lord to thy peo- 
ple; be thou the children's father, and the widow's 
friend; comfort thou the poor and shelter the 
weak, and with all thy might right that which is 
wrong. And, my son, govern thyself by law, then 
shall the Lord love thee, and God above all things 
shall be thy reward. Call thou upon Him to 
advise thee in all thy need, and so He shall help 
thee the better to compass that which thou would- 
est." 

The next, from his Boethiiis, shows his humility 
in a preeminent degree, and we know of no king 
since David who could have written in this strain : 
"Power is never a good, unless he be good that has 
it ; so it is the good of the man, not of the power. 
If power be goodness, therefore is it that no man 
by his dominion can come to the virtues, and to 
merit; but by his virtues and merit he comes to 
dominion and power. Thus no man is better for 
his power ; but if he be good, it is from his virtues 
that he is good. From his virtues he becomes 
worthy of power, if he be worthy of it. . . . 
By wisdom you may come to power, though you 
should not desire the power. You need not be 
solicitous about power, nor strive after it. If you 
be wise and good, it will follow you, though you 
should not wish it. Ah ! Wise One, thou knowest 
that greed and the possession of this earthly power 
never were pleasing to me, nor did I ever greatly 
desire this earthly kingdom — save that I desired 
tools and materials to do work that it was com- 
manded me to do. This was that I might guide 
and wield wisely the authority committed to me. 



ALFRED THE GREAT 69 

Why ! thou knowest that no man may understand 
any craft or wield any power, unless he have tools 
and materials. Every craft has its proper tools. 
But the tools that a king needs to rule are these: 
to have his land fully peopled ; to have priestmen, 
and soldiermen, and workmen. Yea! thou know- 
est that without these tools no king can put forth 
this capacity to rule. ... It was for this I 
desired materials to govern with, that my ability 
to rule might not be forgotten and hidden away. 
For every faculty is apt to grow obsolete and ig- 
nored, if it be without wisdom ; and that which is 
done in unwisdom can never be reckoned as skill. 
This will I say — that I have sought to live worthi- 
ly the while I lived, and after my life to leave to 
the men that come after me a remembering of me 
in good work. . . Ah! my soul, one evil is 
stoutly to be shunned. It is that which most con- 
stantly and grievously deceives all those who have 
a nature of distinction, but who have not attained 
to full command of their powers. This is the de- 
sire of false glory and of unrighteous power, and 
of immoderate fame of good deeds above all oth- 
er people. For many men desire power that they 
may have fame, though they be unworthy, for 
even the most depraved desire it also. But he that 
will investigate this fame wisely and earnestly, 
will perceive how little it is, how precarious, how 
frail, how bereft it is of all that is good. Glory 
of this world! Why do foolish men with a false 
voice call thee glory? Thou art not so. More 
men have pomp and glory and worship from the 



70 ALFRED THE GREAT 

opinion of foolish people, than they have from 
their own works." 

Alfred as a Eefonner. — We have spoken quite 
fully of Alfred as a warrior and man of religious 
principles. He was also a reformer, especially In 
the jurisprudence of his kingdom. 

In reforming the law courts, Alfred found that 
there was need for a thorough re-organization of 
the whole judicial system. Having a strong rev- 
erence for what had already been established, he 
preserved the old so far as possible, and then care- 
fully laid out new ground. 

It would not be interesting to the average read- 
er to give In detail the particulars of the courts 
Alfred established, or reformed. But we note, for 
example, that he established as a chief court, Ini 
each of his shires, what was known as the Shire- 
moot, or Shire-court. Over this the chief, or- 
ealdorman, of the shire presided. He stood nextt 
to the King in authority in the shire, and was- 
judge, adviser to the King and executive. The 
name ealdorman signifies elder man, and implies 
that he was a person of mature years. Usually, 
In presiding at the Shire-moot, he associated with 
him the bishop. We do not read that there was 
an appeal from the ealdorman, but It is certain 
that Alfred reproved such judges as were unjust 
or Ignorant. The ealdorman was also the military 
leader In the shire. Next to the ealdorman stood 
the sheriff (the shire-reeve, or. In Saxon, scir- 
gerefa). He was the deputy of the ealdorman, 
and the fiscal officer of the district, and was ap- 
pointed and removed by the king. In forty-five 



ALFRED THE GREAT 71 

towns there was also the borough-reeve (biirh- 
gerefa), and there were still lower judicial offi- 
cers. He also established the Courts of Tything, 
three of which were created in each county, the 
Courts-leet, etc. 

It will interest anyone to know how carefully 
he worked out the system of suretyship in criminal 
matters. Every Englishman was required to be- 
long to a hundred, tything, or guild, and, if not, 
he was held to be an outlaw, whose life and prop- 
erty were at the mercy of anybody. Every house- 
holder had to keep '' household rolls " of his 
servants. Should a crime be committed within 
the tything the head-borough, wTio was the chief 
man of the tything, had to produce the criminal. 
He was given a certain number of days to produce 
him for trial. The head-borough, with two other 
leading men, might get the head-borough and two 
leading men each of the three neighboring tyth- 
ings — twelve men in all — to swear that in their 
conscience the tything was innocent of any knowl- 
edge of the crime or of the flight. Thereupon the 
first named tything was cleared ; otherwise it had 
to pay the fine awarded by law. Oaths were also 
to be made by every member of the tything that he 
would bring the criminal to trial wherever he 
might find him. The same thing applied to the 
guilds, which were the people of the cities. For 
the state of society then existing this was a most 
remarkable code of criminal law, and probably 
the most effective in its results that the world has 
ever seen. 

A writer has well said : " This mutual liabili- 



72 ALFRED THE GREAT 

ty, or suretyship, was the pivot of all Alfred's ad- 
ministrative reforms. It was an old system known 
by the common name of frank-pledge, but now 
new life was put into it by the King, and in a 
short time it worked a very remarkable change in 
the whole of his kingdom. Merchants and oth- 
ers could go about their affairs withour guards of 
armed men. The forests were emptied of thein 
outlaws, kinless men and Danes, and left to the 
neat-herds and swine-herds, and their charge?." 

In the matter of transferring estates, t^e Sax- 
ons had a simple method, greatly in contrast with 
the complex system which grew up in England in 
later centuries, when scriveners made their living 
from the number of folios embraced in title-deeds. 
The delivery of the key of a door gave one the: 
right to possess the dwelling. A turf cut from the; 
sward, and handed over to the purchaser by the; 
vendor, was a conveyance of the land, just as* 
much as if there had been a recorded title-deed. 
Of course these formalities took place in the pres- 
ence of witnesses; and so strong was the regard 
for law, even while conducted so simply, that no 
necessity arose for Courts of Equity to construe 
contracts. 

It was reported in after years that in Alfred's 
day women could travel from one end of the king- 
dom to the other without fear of insult; that "if a 
wayfarer left his money all night on the highway 
he might come next day and be sure of finding it 
untouched;" that ** the King himself tried the ex- 
periment of hanging up gold bracelets at cross- 
roads, and no man wished, or dared, to lay hands 



ALFRED THE GREAT 73 

on them," etc. But while these were rather imag- 
inary tales, it is certain that Alfred converted the 
whole race of the West Saxons from a semi-bar- 
barous people into law-abiding citizens. If all his 
reforms were not so thorough, this, of just laws 
and the certain execution of them, was at least 
extraordinary in both its temporary and perma- 
nent results. 

It is to be remembered that in Alfred's Code of 
laws *'two main principles guided the law-giver: 
first, that justice should be provided for everyone, 
high and low, rich and poor; next that the Chris- 
tian religion should be recognized as containing 
the law of God, which must be the basis of all 
laws." No higher basic principles than these could 
be employed by any modern lawgiver. 

It has been assumed by some writers, because of 
the great parallels between the Code of Alfred 
and the Mosaic law, that he endeavored to govern 
in all details, so far as practicable, just as Moses 
governed the Israelites. But this was not the case. 
He did begin his Code by practically reciting the 
Ten Commandments, but he also added the pre- 
cept of Matthew, " Whatsoever ye would that 
men should do to you, do ye even so to them." He 
recognized the transition from old to new, which 
we trace to the time when Jesus was born in Ju- 
dea, for Alfred's jurisprudence, while severe in 
its main features, necessarily made so by condi- 
tions of societ}^ in his day, was illumined by the 
spirit of charity and mercy. 

Alfred's Personal Appearance. — While almost 
nothing is known of the details of Alfred's person- 



74 ALFRED THE GREAT 

al appearance, the following by Sir Walter Be- 
sant conveys as much Intelligence or tradition as 
may be gleaned from early sources: ** I take him 
to have been a man of good stature and strong 
build ; a man whose appearance was kingly ; who 
impressed his followers with the gallant and con- 
fident carriage of a brave soldier. But as to his 
face, or the color of his hair or eyes, I can tell 
nothing. Fair hair he had, I think, and blue eyes: 
or the more common type of brown hair and gray; 
eyes. When a king resigns all personal ambitions 
and seeks nothing for himself, it seems natural 
and fitting that, while his works live after him,; 
he himself should vanish without leaving so much! 
as a tradition of his face or figure." The sculptor- 
artist, Thornycroft, has succeeded in his colossal 
figure, which dominates the lower part of High 
street in Winchester, In representing Alfred as a 
majestic warrior, in helmet and cloak, his right 
hand uplifted, raising the hilt of the sword, which 
Is also the sign of the Cross. In his left hand, by 
his side, is a shield. The face Is an imaginary one. 
but strong In character, stern, yet full of repose.^ 



CHAPTER VI 

Alfred as an Author 

His Love for Learning. — We delight to kno\\ 
that, with all his diverse occupations as warrio] 



* A photograph of it is reproduced as the frontispiece U 
this volume. 



ALFRED THE GREAT 75 

and king, Alfred had time, or took time, to study 
and to write. This he did because of his great 
love for learning. And it is not surprising, from his 
general character, that his tastes were altogether 
for religious and useful books. The busiest of 
men in affairs of state, he set aside, whenever prac- 
ticable, some portion of every day to make the 
Saxon language (or Anglo-Saxon, as it began to 
be called in his day), the purveyor of great 
thoughts to his countrymen. When he came to 
the throne the only books in his kingdom were 
in Latin, and this language was not understood 
by the people, nor even by the priests. Alfred him- 
self declared that he scarcely knew of a single 
priest who understood the common Latin prayers, 
or could translate a sentence of them into Eng- 
lish. It was high time something was done, and 
he set about to do it. There were treasures locked 
up in Latin books, but, as his countrymen could 
not understand them, and they were for the most 
part inaccessible, he determined to rectify the 
evil by his own learning. 

Asser, who was much with the King after the 
year 885, gives a charming accdiunt of how Al- 
fred began to perform literary work. " On a cer- 
tain day," said he (it was in 887 or 888), "we 
were both sitting in the King's chamber, talking 
on all kinds of subjects as usual, and it happened 
that I read to him a quotation out of a certain 
book. He heard it attentively with both his ears, 
and addressed me with a thoughtful mind, show- 
ing me at the same moment a book which h'e car- 
ried in his bosom, wherein the daily courses, and 



76 ALFRED THE GREAT 

Psalms, and prayers which he had read In his 
youth were written, and he commanded me to 
write the same quotation in that book. Hearing 
this and perceiving his ingenuous benevolence, and 
devout desire of studying the words of Divine wis- 
dom, I gave, though in secret, boundless thanks to 
Almighty God, who had implanted such a love of 
wisdom in the King's heart. But I could n6t find 
any empty space in that book wherein to write the 
quotation, for it was already full of various mat- 
ters; wherefore I made a little delay, principally 
that I might stir up the bright intellect of the 
King to higher acquaintance with the Divine testi- 
monies. Upon his urging me to make haste and 
write it quickly, I said to him, 'Are you willing 
that I should write that quotation on some leaf 
apart? For it is not certain whether we shall not 
find one or more other such extracts which will 
please you ; and if that should so happen, we shall 
be glad that we have kept them apart.' * Your plan 
is good,' said he; and I gladly made haste to get 
ready a sheet, in the beginning of which I wrote 
what he bade me ; and on that same day I wrote 
therein, as I had anticipated, no less than three 
other quotations which pleased him ; and from that 
time we daily talked together, and found out oth- 
er quotations which pleased him ; so that the sheet 
became full, and deservedly so ; according as it is 
written, 'The just man builds upon a moderate 
foundation, and by degrees passes to greater 
things.' Thus, like a most productive bee, he flew 
here and there, asking questions as he went, until 
he had eagerly and unceasingly collected many 



ALFRED THE GREAT 77 

various flowers of Divine Scripture with which he 
thickly stored the cells of his mind. Now, when 
that first quotation was copied, he was eager at 
once to read, and to interpret in Saxon, and then to 
teach others. The King, inspired by God, began to 
study the rudiments of Divine Scripture on the 
sacred solemnity of St. Martin (Nov. ii), and 
he continued to learn the flowers collected by cer- 
tain masters, and to reduce them into the form of 
one book, as he was then able, although mixed one 
with another, until it became almost as large as 
a psalter. This book he called his Enchiridion, 
or 'Manual,' because he carefully kept it at 
hand day and night, and found, as he told me, no 
small consolation therein." This " Manual " is, 
unfortunately, lost. 

Alfred started upon his new mission by not only 
becoming author himself, but by gathering Hround 
him a select coterie of learned men. He sent 
abroad for ecclesiastics and teachers, and built 
monasteries and schools, where they could con- 
tinue the studies which he directed them to per- 
form, and also to teach. The common belief that 
Alfred founded schools in Oxford which were 
the basis for the present great universities, has 
not been fully established in history, but it is cer- 
tain that he founded there the first mint, where 
were made the coins of the realm. As has been 
stated, he found Asser, the learned monk of St. 
David's, in Wales, and put him into service at 
his court. Asser subsequently repaid this act by 
becoming Alfred's first biographer during Alfred's 
life-time, writing his Annals in 893, though it was 



78 ALFRED THE GREAT 

not completed and not published till after 
his death. He brought Plegmund from Mercia 
and gave him the See of Canterbury. He advised 
with Werfrith, bishop of Winchester, a truly 
learned man. He sent abroad for Grimbald and 
also for John of Saxony. These were but a few 
of the many scholars with which he surrounded 
his court. 

As the Venerable Bede (673-735), the lumin- 
ous and great ecclesiastical writer and historian of 
Wearmouth, had been dead for nearly two cen- 
turies, he could not call him in person to his aid, 
although had Bede lived in his day it is more than 
probable he would have been one of the most ac- 
ceptable helpers to Alfred in carrying forward the 
new plan of giving to the people of England the 
best literature known to exist. But Bede's own 
work, then well-known, written in Latin, called 
his Ecclesiastical History, and intended to show 
what had been God's dealings with His church in 
England, from the time when Pope Gregory intro- 
duced Christianity into Britain to Bede's day, was 
considered the masterpiece on that subject; in fact, 
was the only authentic history of the church in 
Britain during the period of which it treated. This 
work of Bede King Alfred determined to translate 
himself. 

His "History of the World".— But before tak- 
ing this in hand, Alfred decided to translate, first, 
a well-know history of the whole world prepared 
nearly five hundred years before by Orosius. 
Orosius was a priest of Spain, who had visited St. 
Augustine, when that '* Father of the Latin 



ALFRED THE GREAT 79 

Church " was writing his City of God. At Au- 
gustine's request Orosius wrote his Histories, 
" from the beginning of the world to his own 
day," (about 412). 

Singularly enough this work had remained to 
the Ninth Century, and it continued to be until 
the Sixteenth Century, the only recognized au- 
thoritative manual of the world's history. Alfred 
took it, found it rather difficult reading, but 
translated it and made it easy of comprehension. 
It was a tremendous task for an initial work of a 
new author, but Alfred was equal to almost any 
task, and by abridgment, by paraphrase, and by 
enlargement at discretion, the result was a trans- 
lation that no one else in England but Alfred 
could have done so well. 

In this translation of Orosius, the short sum- 
mary of geographical knowledge known to that 
writer was made invaluable by the additions 
which Alfred made to it at first hand, from trav- 
elers in foreign countries and from northern navi- 
gators. On the authority of these navigators he 
tells, as Charles Knight (i 791 -187 3) in his Pop- 
ular History of England says, of the ** waste land 
which the Finns inhabit, obtaining a precarious 
subsistence by hunting and fishing; of wealthy 
men, whose possessions consisted of reindeer; of 
seas where the walrus and the whale were in 
abundance; of Eastland and theEsthonians, where 
there are many towns, and where the rich drank 
mare's milk, and the poor and the slaves drank 
mead. He describes the coasts of Scandinavia 
with singular precision. How true all this is we 



8o ALFRED THE GREAT 

know at the present day. The royal teacher pub-^ 
lished no wild stories, such as are found in other 
Saxon writers who came after him, of people with 
dogs' heads, boars' tusks, and horses' manes; of 
headless giants, or those with two faces on one 
head. Truth was, in itself, as it always will be, 
the best foundation for interesting narrative." 

Sir Clements Markham, K. C. B., president of 
the Royal Geographical Society of England, well 
says concerning Alfred's literary labors in the 
cause of geography in his translating and enlarg- 
ing Orosius: "There have been literary sover- 
eigns since the days of Timaeus, of Sicily, writing 
for their own glory, or for their own education or 
amusement. But Alfred alone wrote with ttic 
sole object of his people's good ; while in his meth- 
ods, in his scientific accuracy and in his aims he 
was several centuries in advance of his time." 

It may be said that in Alfred's day the Saxons 
had no geographical information w^hatever outside 
of the limited area of their own territory and oth- 
er portions of England. Alfred, not only for his 
own sake, but to correct this ignorance, set down 
in writing, besides the information which Oro- 
sius furnished, that which he him«;elf derived 
from all other accessible sources. This is what 
makes his translation of Orosius so intere rrng 
even now. It throws light upon nearly all of 
Ninth Century Europe. 

His " Bede " and " Boethius."— The work of 
Bede came next in order. This was almost the 
history of England, though intended to be a his- 
tory, only, of the conversion of the Angles and 



ALFRED THE GREAT 8i 

Saxons and of the earliest ecclesiastical institutions 
of Britain. Speaking of its relation to the Eng- 
lish Church, Professor John Earle, of Oxford, 
says that " no other national church possesses a 
history of equal merit." 

Another work taken in hand by Alfred was a 
translation of the Consolations of Philosphy, 
written by Boethius, about 522. "A golden book, 
not unworthy the leisure of Plato or TuUy," said 
Gibbon. It was not unworthy the leisure of Al- 
fred, and since his day the great poet Chaucer, and 
also England's famous queen Elizabeth, labored 
on translations of it. Boethius was a Roman sen- 
ator, learned and religious. His Consolations was 
in fthe form of a dialogue between himself and 
Wisdom. The burden of his work was, " That 
every fortune is good for men, whether it seemed 
good to them or evil, and that we ought with all 
our power to inquire after God, every man accord- 
ing to the measure of his understanding." The 
beginning of this translation, according to the 
copy which has come down to us (although per- 
haps done by a later hand than Alfred's) is as 
follows: "King Alfred was translator of this 
book and turned it from book Latin into English 
as it is now done. Sometimes he set word by 
word, sometimes meaning by meaning, as he the 
most plainly and most clearly could explain it, for 
the various and manifold wordly occupations 
which often busied him both in mind and in body. 
. . . And he now prays, and for God's name 
implores, everyone of those who list to read this 
book, that he would pray for him, and not blame 



82 ALFRED THE GREAT 

him, if he more rightly understand it than he 
could." 

His Other Works. — He also translated Pope 
Gregory's Pastoral Care, which is a guide-book 
for the use of the priests. It was the first religious 
manual of his time. In his introduction to 
this translation King Alfred wrote : " When I 
then called to mind how the learning of the Latin 
tongue before this was fallen away throughout the 
English race, though many knew how to read 
writing in English ; then began I, among other un- 
like and manifold businesses of this kingdom, to 
turn into English the book that is named in Latin, 
Pastoralis, and in English the Hind's Book, one 
while word for word, another-while meaning for 
meaning, so far as I learned it with Plegmund, 
my archbishop, and with Asser my bishop, and 
with Grimbald, my mass-priest, and with John, 
my mass-priest. After I had then learned them, 
so that I understood them, and so that I might 
read them with the fullest comprehension, I 
turned them into English, and to each bishop's 
see in my kingdom will I send one and on each is 
an a^stel " (perhaps a clasp on the book; perhaps 
a metal marker) " that is of the value of fifty 
mancuses, and I bid, in God's name, that no man 
undo the aestel from the books, nor the books from 
the minister. It is unknown how long there may 
be so learned bishops as now, thank God, are 
everywhere." 

There are copies of these original translations in 
several public libraries in England ; one can be 
seen under glass by any visitor to the Bodleian Li- 



ALFRED THE GREAT 83 

brary in Oxford. While the book is not consulted 
to-daj^ the King evidently thought it was of the 
highest value. 

Another book which, from a religious point 
of view, is probably the most instructive of Al- 
fred's works, is his Soliloquies of St. Augustine. 
Augustine, when bishop of Carthage, wrote his 
Soliloquies, and these are gathered out of that 
work, but with various intensely suggestive reflec- 
tions by the royal author himself. 

At some time during his years of peace he edited 
(and may, probably, have written all there is in 
that work concerning his own reign) the Saxon 
Chronicles, the best authority of to-day on Saxon 
history in England. 

The last work which certainly can be attributed 
to Alfred is known as his Proverbs. The com- 
pilation now extant is later than his time, as 
each proverb, or paragraph, begins with: " Thus 
quoth Alfred, England's comfort," or, '' Eng- 
land's darling," etc. It is supposed that he wrote 
or spoke the most of them, and they are such a 
reflection of his known state of mind that they 
were, probably, correctly handed down to the 
succeeding generation by some writer by whom 
they were compiled. Here is one : 

Thus quoth Alfred, England's comfort : the Earl 
And the Atheling are under the king, 
To govern the land according to law ; 
The priest and the knight must both alike judge uprightly; 
For as a man sows 
So shall he reap, 
And every man's judgment comes home to him tP his oyrn 
doors." 



84 ALFRED THE GREAT 

Various other original and translated writincis 
are attributed to Alfred, some no doubt genuine 
and some spurious; among them is a book of mar- 
tyrs, Aesop's Fables, and a Treatise on Falconry. 
In the Ely Cathedral is an old MSS., which states 
that he translated the whole of the Old and New. 
Testaments into Saxon, but it is generally believed 
that his labors in this direction extended only to 
the Psalms, and that he was at work on these 
when he died. 

Alfred was fond of poetry. He collected all the 
current poetry based on traditions and legends 
brought from the forests of Germany. He de- 
lighted in old Saxon songs, taught them to his= 
children, and had them sung at court. It is only a 
tradition that he sang them to the music of his' 
own harp, but we can well believe that this was^ 
so. If he did not write songs himself, he at least; 
cherished and loved them, and perpetuated them 
in the literature which he fostered. 

In reference to all these diverse works, it is noti 
to be claimed for Alfred that he was a great orig' 
inal author; he had neither the time nor the in' 
spiration of high genius to become one of the "im- 
mortal few." But he believed in education, pos« 
sessed it himself in a remarkable degree for one 
of his time, and became England's greatest me- 
dium, in his day, for its dissemination. He did 
what his hand and mind found to do, and he did 
it magnificently. 

Professor Earle, of Oxford, well sa^'^s: 

"In our time when books are freely produced 
in great abundance, it is hard to appreciate the 



Alfred the great b^ 

power and originality of King Alfred's work in 
the field of literature. When we look about for 
his motives we find such as these: need of occa- 
sional retirement and solace in the midst of 
harassing affairs, desire for personal improvement 
and edification, strong intellectual appetites, etc. 
— but all these controlled by one chief and dom- 
inant purpose, that of national education. Look- 
ing at the external aspect of the king's situation 
we might have judged it sufficient for him at that 
time to concentrate his energies upon the restora- 
tion of material prosperity and the strengthening 
of the national armaments. That the prior neces- 
sity of these was not overlooked, we have ample 
proof in the subsequent progress of Wessex. But 
this did not satisfy the kingly ambition of Alfred ; 
he craved for his people the higher benefits of 
political life, their moral and intellectual and 
spiritual development. Curiosity may well prick 
us to ask from what source far-reaching aims like 
these so suddenly burst into our history, and that, 
too, at a time of exhaustion at home and appre- 
hension from abroad. If King Alfred saw a con- 
nection between general education and the acqui- 
sition of wealth (as there is some indication that 
he did), this may partly explain the energy of his 
educational policy, but we still desiderate some- 
thing more. If we might assume that being under 
a strong sense of what he had himself gained by 
his early education, he desired to impart the like 
advantages to his people, then and only then the 
problem would find its appropriate and adequate 
solution. The beginning of modern education 



86 ALFRED THE GREAT 

in the Seventh Century were quickened with the 
sense that something had been lost, and the whole 
movement was colored with the sentiment of 
retrieval and recovery. Two great historical 
exhibitions of this effort are displayed in the Latin 
schools of Anglia and of Charlemagne, which 
are in fact but two parts of one movement, linked 
together by the name of Alcuin. King Alfred's 
educational revival is isolated from the proceeding, 
by the wars and desolations of the Wicingas, and 
it starts with a new basis in the installation of thcs 
mother tongue as the medium of elementary teach- 
ing. To this innovation it is due that we alonei 
of all European nations have a fine vernacular lit- 
erature in the Ninth and Tenth and Eleventh 
Centuries. And the domestic culture of that era,i 
I take it, was the cause why the great French! 
immigration which followed in the wake of the 
Norman Conquest did not finally swamp the 
English language." 

His Code of Laws. — In addition to all the fore-* 
going more strictly literary work, as if this were 
not enough for one royal author in his few years 
of quiet, Alfred compiled the laws of his time, and 
this work still goes by the name of Alfred's Lazvs. 
or Code. The law code in use in his day was thai 
of King Ina (d. 726). Alfred continued the ma- 
jor part of these laws, but reformed them. In i 
Prologue to the work he says: " I, Alfred thf 
King, gathered these together and ordered man} 
to be written which our forefathers held, such a; 
I approved, and many which I approved not I re 
jected, and had other ordinances enacted with the 



ALFRED THE GREAT 87 

:ounsel of my Witan : for I dared not venture to 
et much of my own upon the statute book, for 
[ knew not what might be approved by those who 
»hould come after us. But such ordinances as I 
found, either in the time of my kinsman Ina, or of 
Offa, King of the Mercians, or of Ethelbert, who 
fet received baptism in England — such as seemed 
:o me rightest I have collected here, and the rest 
[ have let drop." 

The Father of English Prose.— Before Alfred 
:here was no Anglo-Saxon prose. The England 
)f the earlier Ninth Century had no books in the 
Tiother-tongue worthy of mention. In conse- 
quence of Alfred's devotion to literature, there be- 
^an a Renaissance of learning which set a distinct 
r\ory on the centuries immediately succeeding. 
'\lfred laments the desuetude into which English 
iterature had fallen in these words: 

"Our ancestors, who were the masters of these 
acred places, they loved wisdom, and by means 
)f it they acquired wealth and left it to us. Here 
nay yet be seen their traces, but we are not able 
:o walk in their steps, forasmuch as we have now 
ost both the wealth and the wisdom, because w^e 
vere not willing to bend our minds to that pur- 
uit." By the Eleventh Century real English had 
)ecome solid and enduring speech. 

Alfred's books form one of his most enduring 
nonuments. His character stands revealed in lu- 
ninous fullness and faultlessness on their every 
)age. Selecting the best religious, historical and 
philosophical writings extant in his time — all of 
them, or nearly all, in Latin — he made them over 



88 ALFRED THE GREAT 

into the speech of his people, and under his cleai 
mind and quaint style they were rebourgeoned in- 
to beauty. Amid great pressure of public business 
he still took time, as did Gladstone after him, tc 
study out the most intricate problems connectec 
with morals, duty, civic themes, the human soul 
and its destiny, and, after mastering them, gave 
them to the world in new colorings. No king bet 
fore him, no king after him, did more than Al 
fred for the human race. Greater praise than 
this it is unnecessary to give, less praise would no 
be his due. 



CHAPTER VII 
Comments by Historians 

What Others Have Said of Alfred. — Florence 
monk of Worcester, who died in 1118, and whr 
wrote in his life-time a Chronicle of the kingdom 
thus spoke of Alfred: '' That famous, warlike, vie 
torious king, the zealous protector of widows 
scholars, orphans and the poor ; skilled in the Sax 
on poets ; affable and liberal to all ; endowed wit) 
prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance; mos 
patient under the infirmity which he daily sui 
fered ; a most stern inquisitor in executing justice 
vigilant and devoted in the service of God." N 
better eulogy has followed since, though it wa 
but the beginning of tributes from historians an^ 
poets, which have never ceased since Florence' 
day. 

Asser, writing in 893 (in Alfred's life-time 



ALFRED THE GREAT 89 

n his Annals of the Reign of Alfred the Great, 
peaking of him as having little support in his 
zreat undertaking by the generation among which 
ne lived, says: *' He alone, sustained by the Di- 
v^ine aid, like a skilful pilot, strove to steer his 
ship, laden with much wealth, into the safe and 
much desired harbor of his country, though al- 
most all his crew were tired, and suffered them 
not to faint." 

Fabius Ethelwerd (d. 998?) in his Chronicle, 
refers to Alfred as " that immovable pillar of 
the Western Saxons, that man full of justice, bold 
in arms, learned in speech, and, above all other 
things, imbued with the Divine instructions." 

Said Sir Henry Spelman (1562-1641): *'The 
wonder and astonishment of all agesl If wc re- 
flect on his piety and religion, it would seem that 
he had always lived in a cloister ; if on his warlike 
exploits, that he had never been out of camps ; if 
on his learning and writings, that he had^ spent his 
whole life in college ; if on his wholesome laws and 
wise administration, that these had been his whole 
study and employment." 

Thomas Fuller (i6o8-'6i) in his work, The 
Worthies of England, said : " He left learning 
where he had found ignorance; justice where he 
found oppression; peace where he found distrac- 
tion. . . . He loved religion more than su- 
perstition." 

David Hume (i7ii-'76) in The History 
of England, speaks of Alfred as " the model of 
that perfect character which, under the domina- 
tion of a sage or wise man, philosophers have 



90 ALFRED THE GREAT 

been fond of delineating, rather as a fiction oil 
their imagination than in hopes of ever seeing iti 
really existing." 

Edward A. Freeman (i823-'92), in his charm- 
ing History of the Norman Conquest, felt free tc 
say: "Alfred ... is the most perfect char^ 
acter in history. He is a singular instance of a 
prince who has become a hero of romance, who, asi 
such, has had countless imaginary exploits attrib- 
uted to him, but to whose character romance hasi 
done no more harm than justice. ... No 
other man on record has ever so thoroughly united 
all the virtues, both of the ruler and of the private 
man. In no other man on record were so man} 
virtues disfigured by so little alloy. A saint withi 
out superstition, a scholar without ostentation, 2 
warrior all whose wars were fought in the de- 
fence of his country, a conqueror whose laureh! 
were never stained by cruelty, a prince never cast- 
down by adversity, never lifted up to insolence in 
the day of triumph — there is no other name in 
history to compare with his." 

" It is no easy task for anyone who has beer 
studying his life and works," said Thomas Hughe: 
(i823-'96), the author of Tom Brozvns SchoOi 
Days, " to set reasonable bounds to their reverence 
and enthusiasm for the man." 

''Alfred's name," says Frederic Harrison, one 
of the most gifted of living Englishmen, " is al- 
most the only one in the long roll of our national 
worthies which awakens no bitter, no jealous 
thought ; which combines .the honor of all. Alfred 
represents at once the ancient monarchy, the 



ALFRED THE GREAT 91 

army, the navy, the law, the literature, the poetry, 
the art, the enterprise, the industry, the religion of 
our race. Neither Welshman, nor Scot, nor Irish- 
man, can feel that Alfred's memory has left the 
trace of a wound for his national pride. No dif- 
ference of church arises to separate any who 
would join to do Alfred honor. No saint in the 
calendar was a more loyal and cherished member 
of the ancient faith ; and yet no Protestant can 
imagine a purer and more simple follower of the 
Gospel. Alfred was a victorious warrior whose 
victories left no curses behind them ; a king whom 
no man ever charged with a harsh act: a scholar 
who never became a pedant: a saint who knew no 
superstition : a hero as bold as Launcelot — as spot- 
less as Galahad. No people, in ancient or modern 
times, ever had a hero-founder at once so truly 
historic, so venerable, and so supremely great. 
Alfred was more to us than the heroes in antique 
myths — more than Theseus and Solon were to 
Athens, or Lycurgus to Sparta, or Romulus and 
Numa were to Rome ; more than St. Stephen was 
to Hungary, or Pelayo and the Cid to Spain; 
more than Hugh Capet and Jeanne d'Arc were 
to France; more than William the Silent was to 
Holland; nay, almost as much as the Great 
Charles was to the Franks." And again: "Of 
all the names in history there is only our English 
Alfred whose record is without stain and without 
weakness ; who is equally amongst the greatest of 
men in genius, in magnanimity, in valor, in moral 
purity, in intellectual force, in practical wisdom 
and in beauty of soul. In his recorded career 



92 ALFRED THE GREAT 

from Infancy to death, we can find no single trait 
that is not noble and suggestive, nor a single act or 
word that can be counted as a flaw." 

John Richard Green (iSsy-'Ss), whose His- 
tory of the English People has proved such charm- 
ing reading to the preceding and present genera- 
tion of readers and will not be superseded in our 
time, remarked of Alfred: "Of the narrowness, 
of the want of proportion, of the predominance 
of one quality over another which goes commonly 
with an intensity of moral purpose, Alfred showed 
not a trace. Scholar and soldier, artist and man 
of business, poet and saint, his character kept that 
perfect balance which charms us in no other Eng- 
lish man save Shakespeare. . . . Little by 
little men came to know what such a life of 
worthiness meant. Little by little they came to 
recognize in Alfred a ruler of higher and nobler 
stamp than the world had seen. Never had it 
seen a king who lived solely for the good of his 
people. Never had it seen a ruler who set aside 
every personal aim to devote himself solely to the 
welfare of those whom he ruled. It was this 
grand self-mastery that gave him his power over 
the men about him." 

A more minute historian than Green, and one 
of the most popular of writers on English history, 
Charles Knight (i 791 -1873), in his Popular His- 
tory of England, declared that *' The character 
of one ruler never more completely influenced the 
destinies of his country. Alfred saved England 
from foreign domination. He raised her in the 
scale of nations and maintained her in the fellow- 



ALFRED THE GREAT 93 

ship of Christian communities. . . . Alfred 
saved his own race from destruction; and what- 
ever may be the after-fortune of that race, the in- 
domitable courage, the religious endurance, the 
heart and hope of this man under every trial, con- 
stituted a precious bequest to his crown and to the 
nation." 

Says Sir Walter Besant in a volume on Al- 
fred the Great, published in 1899 as a memorial 
volume, to commemorate the one thousandth an- 
niversary of King Alfred's death, which was then 
approaching: ''From time to time in history — gen- 
erally in some time of great doubt and trouble: 
or in some time when the old ideals are in 
danger of being forgotten : or in some time when 
the nation seems losing the sense of duty and of 
responsibility — there appears one, man or woman, 
who restores the better spirit of the people by his 
example, by his preaching, by his self-sacrifice, by 
his martyrdom. He is the prophet as priest, the 
prophet as king, the prophet as law-giver. There 
passes before us a splendid procession of men and 
women who have thus restored a nation or raised 
the fallen ideals, among whom we recognize 
many faces. There are Savonarola; Francis of 
Assisi ; Joan of Arc ; our own Queen Elizabeth, 
greatest and strongest of all women; the Czar 
Peter. But the greatest figure of them all — the 
most noble, the most god-like — is that of the 
Ninth Century Alfred, King of that little coun- 
try which you have upon your map. There is 
none like Alfred in the whole page of history: 
none with a record altogether so blameless : none 



94 ALFRED THE GREAT 

so wise : none so human. I like to think that the 
face of the Anglo-Saxon at his best and noblest 
is the face of Alfred. I am quite sure and certain 
that the mind of the Anglo-Saxon at his best and 
noblest is the mind of Alfred : that the aspirations, 
the hopes, the standards of the Anglo-Saxon at 
his best and noblest are the aspirations, the hopes, 
the standards of Alfred. He is truly our Leader, 
our Founder, our King." 

A few among many others may be quoted in 
conclusion: Johann Gottfried Herder (1744- 
1803) in A Philosophy of the History of Man- 
kind: "A pattern for kings in a time of extremi- 
ty, a bright star in the history of mankind." Sam- 
uel T. Coleridge ( 1772-1834) : " One of the mo^-t 
august characters that our age has produced." 
Johann Martin Lappenberg (1794-1865): 
** Greater and better earned glory has never been 
attached to the memory of any chieftain than that 
which encircles the name of Alfred." Tennyson 
(i8o9-'92): ''Truth-teller was our England's 
Alfred named." Charles Dickens (i8i2-'7o): 
" The greatest character among the nations of the 
earth." Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) : "One 
of the greatest figures in the history of the world." 
J. A. Giles (1808-1884): "To praise such a 
man is to gild the rainbow or paint the lily." 



ALFRED THE GREAT 95 

NOTES ON THE TEXT. 

'Page 7. " Ealdormen " eldermen, or earl's 
men; the rulers among the Angles, Saxons and 
other Teutonic nations. They preceded their 
kings, which were not, in title or office, an exist- 
ing reality until these peoples, in England, found 
it necessary to elect some one to govern who would 
have more authority than the earl's man, or chief 
public citizen. The name survives in the English 
earl of the present day. 

^Page g. A subsequent volume of this '* Li- 
brary " will give an account of all that is known 
of the Druids and of Druidism. 

^Page 9. After about A. D. 296, the term 
" painted men " {picti, or Picts), came to be ap- 
plied to Britons in the far north (Scotland), 
who continued to paint, while the Britons in Ro- 
man England did not. In 360, when the inhab- 
itants of Ireland came to be known to the Romans 
also as " painted men," the term Scotfi, or Scots, 
was applied to them, it being a Celtic word of 
nearly the same meaning as " Picti." See Rhj^s's 
Celtic Britain, page 239. 

■♦Page II. For an interesting discussion of the 
use and meanings of the word Britain and kindred 
derivatives, which, however, comes to no satisfac- 
tory conclusion, see Rhys's Celtic Britain, chap. 
VL 

sPage 12. See an interesting article on " Corn- 
ish Antiquities," by Max Muller, in Chips from 
a German Workshop, Vol. 3, p. 238. Irish, Gaelic 



96 ALFRED THE GREAT 

and Welsh, as spoken to-day, are, of course, 
" descendants " of early Britain languages. 

^Page 14. It would seem as if the entry of the 
Angles was, practically, of all that people, because 
they do not figure subsequently in the Low Coun- 
try history. The Jutes probably continued in 
possession of "Juteland," (now called Jutland, to 
be found on any modern map of Denmark). 
The Saxons, as Germans, continued their national 
history. 

7Page 16. Hengest and Horsa, who were eald- 
ormen, were probably not Saxons, but Jutes, and 
arrived about 449. They landed, with boats and 
a large company, on the island of Thanet, at a 
spot now called Ebbsfleet — just near Ramsgate, 
on the extreme east point of England. They 
remained, like others after them, to settle in the 
country, which was rich in fertility and of a bet- 
ter climate than their own. 

^Page 20. The names of all this royal family, 
from Ethelwulf to Alfred, were spelled in the 
Anglo-Saxon MSS, with a diphthong (Ethel- 
wulf, Alfred, etc.) and this spelling has been re- 
tained by many historians, like Green, Freeman 
and others, but is modernized by most scholars of 
the present day. 

9Page 20. It is Asser, the monk, who gives 
Alfred's birth as 849 in his " Life of Alfred," and 
that has been accepted as the date ever since. Some 
historians believe that he was born seven years 
earlier, in which case his first journey to Rome 
was made when he was eleven years of age. 

'oPage 23. " Norman " is a corruption of 



Alfred the great 97 

Northman, or Norseman. All the Northmen were 
called Normans by the Germans and French; in 
England they were usually called Danes. After 
the Northmen had acquired a portion of northern 
France, and that territory was called Normandy 
(in 912), the people who came from that terri- 
tory were termed Normans by the English, and 
the designation was applied to them thereafter. 

"Page 26. Athelstan is often called in history 
a " son " of Ethelwulf, but no statement that he 
had such a son is in any reliable document relating 
to that king's family. Charles Plummer, in his 
recent Life and Times of Alfred, thinks he was 
a brother of Ethelwulf, and such may have been 
the case. 

^^Page 36. For a full account of this ** White 
Horse," see the author's Bright Days in Merrie 
England, pp. 203-206. 

^^Page 39. Some historians believe that it is a 
mistake to suppose Alfred purchased this peace 
with money. For example, Thomas Hughes, who 
says in his Life of Alfred the Great, p. 84: "I 
can find no authority for believing that Alfred fell 
Into the fatal and humiliating mistake of either 
paying them anything, or giving hostages, or 
promising tribute." He thinks, instead, that the 
Danes " quit," for the time, being afraid of him. 
But most authorities hold the opposite, and aver 
that it was good statecraft. 

^4Page 46. John Richard Green in his Making 
of England, thinks that the Treaty which exists 
under the name of the " Treaty of Wedmore " 
was one executed at a later date, when there was 



98 ALFRED THE GREAT 

a second treaty made with Guthrum, but in any 
event the document is genuine. 

''sPage 48. *' Bookland " was land that was 
held by evidence in writing free from any service, 
fief, or fee, and was distinguished from " folk- 
land," which was held at the pleasure of the lord. 

'^Page 53. ''Hundred " was used to designate 
a hundred families. Ten families made a town, or 
tithing, and ten tithings made a hundred. " Shire" 
was equivalent to county. 

^7Page 59. Charles Plummer, in his Life and 
Times of Alfred, suggests that the date of Alfred 
death was one year earlier, October 26, 900, and 
Frederic Harrison is of the same opinion. 



BEST WORKS IN ENGLISH 
ON ALFRED THE GREAT. 

Hughes, Thomas A. ''Alfred the Great." Lon- 
don, 1881. 

Plummer, Charles. "Life and Times of Alfred 
the Great." Oxford, 1902. 

Tappan, E. M. "Days of Alfred the Great." 
1900. 

Jeffery, Frederic V. "A Perfect Prince." Lon- 
don, 1 90 1. 

Conybeare, Edward. "Alfred in the Chronicles." 
London, 1899. 

Draper, Warwick H. "Alfred the Great." Lon- 
don, 1 901. 

Hawkins, W., and Smith, E. T. "The Story of 
Alfred the Great." London, 1900. 



ALFRED THE GREAT 99 

CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 

Bom (probably) 849 

Sent to Rome 853 

Again goes to Rome 855 

Returns to England 856 

Assists Burhred of Mercia against Danes. . . 868 

Marries Elsvvitha 869 

Defeats Danes at Ashdown 871 

Succeeds Ethelred as King. . . (after Easter) 871 

Defeats Danes at Wilton (summer of) 871 

After nine pitched battles, makes peace 

(late in) 871 

Builds fleet and defeats Danes at sea 875 

Defeats Danes at sea 877 

Retires to Isle of Athelney ( Jan.) , 878 

Musters new army near Selwood Forest .... 

. (May), 878 
Defeats Danes at Ethandun (Eddington) . . 

(May), 878 

Makes peace near River Avon (May), 878 

Is godfather to King Guthrum. . . . (July), 878 

Again defeats Danes at sea 882 

Sends assistance to Christians in India 882 

Again scatters Danish fleet 885 

Rebuilds and refortifies London 886 

Introduces trial by jury 886 

Begins his translations of Latin into Anglo- 
Saxon 888 

Campaigns against Hastings 893- 897 

Destroys fleet of 20 Viking vessels 897 

Does most of his literary work 897 to death 

Dies Oct. 26, ( 900 or) 901 



i6o 



Alfred the great 



INDEX TO CONTENTS. 



Alfred the Great, 

character, 6 ; ancestors, 
15 ; birth, 20 ; goes to 
Rome, 27 ; learns to read, 
32 , first battle, 35 ; other 
battles, 36 ; mounts the 
throne, 37 ; marriage, 38 ; 
negotiates peace, 39 ; 
builds fleet, 40; continues 
fighting, 41; hides at 
Athelney, 42 ; his jewel, 
44 ; again fights, 45; peace 
with Guthrum, 45 ; builds 
more ships, 49 ; fights 
with Hastings, 50 ; last 
four years, 52 ; death and 
burial, 59 ; will of, 60 ; 
successor, 62 ; homelife, 
63 ; children, 64 ; religi- 
ous life, 64 ; reforms, 70 ; 
personal appearance, 73 ; 
love for learning, 74 ; 
■writings, 78 ; code of 
laws, 86 ; father of Eng- 
lish prose, 87 ; praise by 
others. 88 

Angles, 13 

Anselm, 57 

Arthur, King, 16, 19 

Ashdown, 36, 61 

Asser, 38, 75, 77, 88 

Athelney, 42 

Athelstan, 26, 99 

Augustine, St., 17, 78 

Baldwin Bras-de-Fer, 31 

Bede, Venerable, 78 

Boethius, 81 

Britain, early name, 11 

Baixton, 45 

Crnute, 48 

Celts, 9, II 

Cerdic, 15, 17 

Charles the Bald, 28, 29 

Cynric, 15, 17 

Danes, 18, 33, 26, 34 

Druids, 12 

Ealdormen, 7, 95 

Edmund, St., 34 

Edward, 62, 64 

Egbert, 18, 24 

Elfrida, 31, 64 

Elswitha, 38, 60 



England, Roman period, 8 ; 

after Roman period, 13 ; 

when called England, 14, 

18 
Ethelbald, 18, 22, 27, 30, 31 
Ethelbert, 17, 22, 33 
Ethelflseda, 20, 62, 64 
Etheline, 60 
Ethelred, 22, 33, 64 
Ethelward, 60, 64 
Ethelwald. 60 
Ethelwulf, 18, 20-31 
Gregory I., 17, 82 
Guthrum, 45 
Hastings, 50 
Hyde Abbey 60 
Ina, 87 
Judith, 29, 64 
Jutes, 14, 96 
Leo TV., 27 
London, 48 
Matilda, 31 
Mercia, 20, 39 
Morton, 36 
Normans, 23, 96 
Nottingham, 34 
Okeley, 26 
Orosius, 78 
Osburga, 21, 30 
Paris, 23 
Paulinus, 17 
Peterborough, 34 
Picts, II, 24, 95 
Reading, 35, 36 
Roman occupation, 8 
Saxons, 14 ; language, 53 ; 

manners and customs, 55 
Scots, II, 24 
Swithin. St.. 26, 27, 59 
Thames, 18, 21, 26 
Thornycroft, 74 
Veneti, 8 
Vikings, 49 
Wantage, 20 
Wedmore, 46 
Werfrith, 78 
Wessex, 16, 19, 22 
White Horse, 20, 36 
William the Conqueror, 52 
Winchester, 48, 59 
Wolvesey Castle, 63 
York, 34 



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